31 Comments

1. RogerA:

I was wondering how I was going to provide some feedback from the previous thread–and I apologize for the rather technical nature of some of my comments–but Roger, you have given me a wonderful entre: This is for Charlie (C)-recall the discussion of global warming a few threads down–I posed my question about covariance structure modelling to the people at Realclimate.org–I did not receive an answer on the thread so reposed it the the site owner–basically,I got shined on–which suggests to me they werent familiar with the topic of CSM; a shame, because that statistical approach would give us a much better feel for the relative contributions of the independent variables to changes in the depend variable of global warming.

The Kyoto accords are beneath contempt–a politically correct approach that penalizes only the industrialized countries and based on extraordinarily dubious science. Thus the import of my comments above: there ARE methods to get at the contribution of human activity to global warming; and it is apparent to me these are either not known by, or of interest to those who advocate so strongly to restrain the engine of economic development that is the western democracies.

Dec 18, 2004 - 4:22 pm 2. Terrye:

If Kyoto were to work it would only reduce the earth’s temperature by aobut one half of a degree by the year 2050. And there is no reason to believe it will work.

I read last year that the Europeans [with the exception of Finland] have not met their goals and of course there is nothing to make them to do so. Useless. Even if the US were to sign on to Kyoto it would be abandoned when the economic impact became too costly. It would seem it would be better to try and find new technologies to deal with the situation.

I think that not only do the Europeans want to slow down the American economy they also seem to think that there is something pristine about poverty, so long as only the third world is effected anyway. I don’t see them living in thatch huts and cooking over dung fires.

Dec 18, 2004 - 4:54 pm 3. ambisinistral:

I’ve ranted and raved about this before… one of the problems in negotiating treaties these days is the interference of NGOs in the negotiation process.

A prime example is the attempt to create a treaty regulating land mines. Land mines are a defensive tool for armies, so a ban on their use was unrealistic. The U.S., Russia and China had been holding talks on at least regulating them — particulrily in the area of unmarked air and artillery delivered mine fields. NGOs stepped in, wrote a treaty that was little more than a propoganda screed, and imposed an artificial deadline on ending the negotiations.

Enough small states, most of them without effective militaries, signed on to ratify the useless scrap of paper. The result — neither the U.S., Russia, China, nor India ratified the treaty. Serious treaty talks were hijacked by non-governmental agencies and as a result concrete progress towards mitigating the very real dangers of unmarked minefields were sacrificed for “feel good” do-nothingness.

The ICC and Kyoto suffered from the same problems with NGOs. Frankly, I think that treaties need to be developed between sovereign nations without the interference of transitory committees that have more of a stake scoring propoganda points than in developing workable, if limited, solutions to very real problems between nations.

It gets to the heart of what I think should be a plank in American foreign policy — that the US explicitly rejects the post-modernist notion that there is any sovereignty that exists above National sovereignty. The UN is a forum for discussion between nations, with no existence beyond that, and NGOs have no meaningful place at negotiation tables next to nations.

Dec 18, 2004 - 5:05 pm 4. richard mcenroe:

Aww, don’t tell me it’s dead… I’ve been yelling at the hippies in the other march that their vigil candles are contributing to global warming and they look so conflicted…

Dec 18, 2004 - 6:54 pm 5. Sam_S:

Ha! Richard, good one.

I’ve been in a long debate in a newsgroup about Kyoto, and finally blew the whole thing up by revealing a “secret plan” by the US (Just describe the Kyoto Protocol, but substitute US for international agency, and “company” for country).

I was the most horrible, stupid, corrupt program they (the greenie-weenies) ever heard of until they found out it was their own pet program. Now they’re just stuttering and trying to find an out.

Dec 19, 2004 - 1:28 am 6. David Thomson:

The world revolves around the intellectual classes in the Marxist scheme of things. Capitalism rewards only the creators of wealth and value. The Kyoto silliness is simply another attempt by the leftist intellectual class to grab power over the economy. The free market is very unkind towards these deluded fools. ìCapitalist oppressorsî have a tendency to treat them rudely and demand that they leave the room so that adults can get some work accomplished.

Dec 19, 2004 - 3:43 am 7. pothos:

Upon my arrival in Ireland shortly after Bush’s first inauguration all I heard about was Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto – the first evidence that “W” was pure evil. Since I had a high-up, and fairly agnostic (on warming causes) climatologist for a friend back in the US I knew that warming was a fact, but I could also knowledgably defend Bush’s committment to finding a workable alternative to Kyoto.

As the summer of 2001 moved along and two other bugaboos were heard in the resurgent anti-Americanism of the Dublin crowd (the death penalty and the ICC) it became apparent to me how badly Ireland was doing in terms of its Kyoto obligations. You had only to look at the air for evidence. Their serious water problems were less apparent: fertilizers in the run-off exceeded all EU limits. And it was the case of these nitrates and the accompanying insolence of the Irish farm lobbies and government ministers towards EU directives that made me realize that the EU had no power of enforcement and seemingly no will – on this and other subjects. The directives were meaningless anyone paying attention knew it.

From a May, 2003 report: “Recent results released by the European Environment Agency reveal that emissions of greenhouse gases from EU member states have increased for a second consecutive year.† The data reveals that 10 out of 15 member states are off track for achieving their agreed share of the EU greenhouse gas emissions reduction.† Ireland, Spain and Portugal are the worst offenders.† Irelandís emissions in 2001 were well over double the 13% increase it has been allocated.”

http://www.algoodbody.ie/news/load.asp?date=22/11/2004&file=PUB%3A890

But worse still was the lack of public awareness about the transgressions. No one in hundreds of conversations I had in mid-2001 was familiar with the situation, though the outrage about Bush vs. Kyoto remained high. It was this state of an ignorant consensus that was setting the stage for the greatest display of hypocrisy I’d ever seen, or even been able to imagine: post-9/11 Ireland. Outrage over Kyoto was one of the elements that had prepared peoples’ perception that we had a 9/11 coming to us.

Some of the environmental attitudes can be gleaned from this post-9/11 page on Irish tourism:

http://www.geocities.com/irelandvus911/FCEADBL2.htm

BTW, this renewed interest in Alice Miller’s “Prisoners of Childhood” is, well… silly. The book is an extended and over-literal fantasy of the developmental approach, permanently blinkered by the child’s childish outlook. Oh, it’s very seductive for Americans – and dare I say it, Californians – to want to render a personalistic psychology from facile, humanistic/subjectivistic causes-and-effects (complete with victimization formulas), but there comes a time to grow up, indeed! There are much better ideas out there.

Dec 19, 2004 - 7:36 am 8. Duke:

A big part of Kyoto is the attempt by the EU to build a fortress of 400 million people that can control production around the world by setting their own standards and thereby gaining dominance. They may or may not wake up to the fact that India, China, and the U.S. make their market look like a mouse at the zoo, and two of those markets are growing at ten percent per year and have been for the past 8 years.

Some of us are so old we still think India is starving. India has been a net food exporter for the last six years, something else the experts told us could never happen, and they’ve done it without NFL or Soccer leagues.

Dec 19, 2004 - 7:42 am 9. ricpic:

Europe ain’t growing anytime soon. What to do? Squelch the growers. Ergo…Kyoto.

Dec 19, 2004 - 10:12 am 10. pothos:

ricpic, For appearance’s sake alone isn’t it better to encourage the Europeans to continue a treaty they can’t possibly live up to than to sabotage Kyoto for them, thus providing one more fantasized example of bad US influence and hegemony? Let them hang themselves for all to see.

Bush originally promised a unilateral alternative to Kyoto and I’m still waiting.

As far as I can tell Crichton offers no plan for bracing ourselves, our shorelines, and our economy. His argument is seemingly focused on the argument about whether the warming is man-made or not? To be long-range practical for a moment, I’d ask him what difference it makes?

Dec 19, 2004 - 11:02 am 11. Roberts:

It makes a huge difference pothos. If the causes of warming are not manmade, then it becomes silly to claim that man can reverse it.

In fact, the question is so important that the IPCC based much of their argument on the demonstrably false notion that contemporary temperatures were unprecedented – just to buttress the claim that warming is manmade.

Dec 19, 2004 - 11:23 am 12. Terrye:

Pothos:

I don;t know why everyone blames Bush for Kyoto anyway, Clinton could not get the Senate to ratify it either and without them it really doe snot matter what Bush or Clinton say. The Europeans need to educate themselves about how our political system works before they blow off about it.

I think global warming is a natural process that can be exacerbated by man made pollutants. But I don’t think we can stop it anymore than we can stop another ice age or continental drift. The shorelines have been changing forever, how is this different?

Dec 19, 2004 - 11:33 am 13. pothos:

Roberts, if the causes of warming are not manmade then why must it follow that man can’t also slow down the warming? (The rhetoric about “reversing it” aside for now.)

I agree with you – and with Crichton – that the phony science and politically motivated hype isn’t helping the situation. But isn’t it short-sighted to form our planning and strategy concerning global warming solely on our reaction to “science” and rhetoric we find tendentious and risible? I’m trying to stick to the empirical here, and not to jump to any conclusions.

No climatologist can say to what extent our own carbon emissions complicate what seems to be a natural trend, therefore no one knows whether and to what extent we can delay the inevitable. Nor can we even know what damage or benefits may occur from global warming. IMO, that’s our situation so far, and is far from “silly”.

Dec 19, 2004 - 11:45 am 14. pothos:

Terrye, I haven’t been here in awhile but I remember always enjoying your comments.

I don’t think we can stop global warming either, or even stop ourselves from exascerbating it if that’s what we’re doing. My climatologist friend did a lot of work in Antarctica. I remember her using the analogy that I’ve heard elsewhere: that the thawing of the earth beneath that continent (and thus the quickening of the 5 glaciers pouring onto the soon-to-melt Ross ice shelf) is like putting a frozen turkey straight into the oven. A few million years later and some of that heat begins to penetrate the frozen hulk’s core.

Our shorelines can, do and should change, but until recently the Federal government was reimbursing owners of east coast, barrier beach, luxury homes that got in the way of hurricanes. I’m saying that we need to plan better is all, and part of the planning is better study of the situation, not jumping to conclusions on either side.

On TV last week I heard Crichton refuting the “melting of Greenland” theory. Well, he’s wrong, and I’ll send you my own before and after photos of the Greenland coast if you’re interested. But since Greenland is melting only at the coast while it’s building up snow in the center, how exactly is Crichton’s comment not just as facile, tendentious and hype-filled as the bad science he and I are both combatting? The man’s selling a book let’s remember.

On your other question, the Euros were just prepared to hate Bush and to forgive Clinton anything. And I lived there when they hated Reagan just as much, so don’t let their bad memories fool you. As a Bushie you can imagine that I find the Euros more than a bit irritating.

Dec 19, 2004 - 12:09 pm 15. timmah!:

Pothos, your anecdote on Irish hypocrisy reminds me of a certain Republique that unilaterally declared itself “too important” to obey the euro treaty’s limit on fiscal deficits.

Dec 19, 2004 - 12:30 pm 16. pothos:

timmah!, you’ve correctly paired the most outspoken, European “republics of virtue”. Most Americans know only of the one, which is why Ireland never gets removed from the CAGW’s annual pork list. The Irish are no fools and will continue to accept our annual GIFT of millions, just as they have their hands deep in the pockets of the EU. But it’s always, “give us your dollars and euro, but don’t ask us for anything but our advice.”

You might enjoy these samples from Ireland’s press in 2001 which present a good thumbnail of Ireland’s collective attitude about the continent and also include more environmental tid-bits (It was the tiny Irish population’s initial rejection of the Treaty of Nice that kept huge populations in countries like Poland waiting in the wings):

http://www.geocities.com/irelandvus911/niceblu2.htm

And here are some fun numbers to follow up on your intuition:

In an October, 2003 Eurobarometer poll, Europeans were asked to rate a list of countries as to whether or not they presented “a threat to peace in the world”. In Ireland, the United States was seen as a threat by 60% of those surveyed, trailing only Israel and North Korea as threats. By comparison, 52% in France, followed by 45% in Germany perceived the US as a threat. The European average was at 53%.

Dec 19, 2004 - 12:55 pm 17. Terrye:

pothos:

Well coming from that blood soaked little continent that survey is really something.

Now let’s see, who has started the most wars and caused the most in genral trouble? If the Irish feel that way we can always refuse to let them come here.. I have said before that the Europeans remind me of bad teenagers that disapprove of the way Dad makes his living but damn well expect to be included in the will and about that advance on the allowance…

BTW, wasn’t the Northwest Passage supposed to have been travelled by the Vikings centuries ago when there was less ice up north?

Dec 19, 2004 - 1:41 pm 18. pothos:

Yeah Terrye, the contradiction is so stunning I think the Irish should be given cavity searches before they enter here!

I don’t know if anyone noticed the other day that the “Columbia 3″, the IRA men who were picked up with false passports as they exited FARC-land in August, 2001 were found guilty of training the FARC, probably in urban warfare and bomb-making. The people of Ireland have always been united in their outrage that Columbia, “a US puppet” with a legal system so much worse than their own (right!) continued to hold these innocent birdwathers. Lets see how they react now.

Though the weather was certainly lovely at the end of the 1st millenium I believe the general consensus is still that Amundsen was the first to make the Northwest Passage in 1906. The question of Viking penetration into NA tends down the eastern seaboard instead. Many theories about the latter exist (made more confusing by accounts of times when grapes may very well have grown in the Canadian Maritimes) but the southernmost material evidence of a Viking presence was found in Brooklin, Maine a few years back. That was a coin with the image of the 11th century King Olaf. Unearthed in an Indian midden, it may have moved south solely through Indian trading.

I wanted to say earlier that the irrefutable findings of past climate change may not disprove but certainly compromise at least one of Crichton’s more facile arguments – that long-term trends can’t be predicted due to the march of technological solutions – whether these solutions are intended as solutions or simply the felicitous outcome of some other advancement.

That kind of optimism may very well apply here, but Crichton’s complaint about arbitrary prolongations of trends is also reflective of his inherent uniformitarianism, which gives short shrift to the bizarre logic suggested by climate data.

If throughout the eons temperatures have undergone drastic shifts within very short periods then a “complexity” or “chaos” approach would beg the question of how long one can wait before some magic number trips up the whole system? What a distasteful question to anyone following in the footsteps of Lyell (not to mention Alice Miller – eek!).

If Crichton is saying we know very little then I would definitely agree with that. But posing as a know-it-all apostate so that he can to pay off his alimony bills may do more harm than good. Gauging from the comments I’ve read on several blogs my fellow UN-haters and Euro-critics may be concluding that all of science is so flawed and politicized that we needn’t regard it at all.

Wretchard characterized my own position best:

“… environmental policy should be a heuristic. It must be fundamentally grounded in science yet not so sure of itself as to establish tentative conclusions as dogma. This argues for a more flexible policy regime than those which set arbitrary targets, for finding a way of setting the orientation of the vector without specifying its length.”

Dec 19, 2004 - 2:23 pm 19. pothos:

I will, of course, read the Crichton book itself before I can be sure of what he’s arguing. But knowing that no one else has read it either I’m commenting here on the initial “Crichton effect” which may well be at variance with the arguments his book is advancing.

As a biologist, no set of arguments ever did more to remove the shackles from my eyes than those of the quasi-Marxists such as Lewontin and Gould. You can never really know who’s wearing the blinkers at any one time, but that’s another story for another time …

Dec 19, 2004 - 2:42 pm 20. Dishman:

Part of the problem is that in the US, treaties actually have some meaning, as in force of law. The Euros seem to have scant regard for treaties except as window dressing.

Dec 19, 2004 - 3:39 pm 21. Charlie (Colorado):

Roberts, if the causes of warming are not manmade then why must it follow that man can’t also slow down the warming? (The rhetoric about “reversing it” aside for now.)

Pothos, it doesn’t follow necessarily. On the other hand, if global warming isn’t anthropogenic, it sure doesn’t give much reason to believe that we can affect it. If, for example, the global warming is the result of increased insolation — which would fit with the contemporary global warming on Mars — CO2 limitations might do nothing at all.

See, that’s the problem with those models: there is an observation of increased CO2 content in the atmosphere coincident with an increased measured average temp. Since correlation doesn’t imply causation, you ask “Can this explain the warming?” and model it, and we find that with appropriate settings and assumptions, we can construct a model that shows the appropriate warming based on the increased CO2 level. But the fact that we can construct such a model doesn’t make the model correct. You always need to check the model by seeing if it’s predictive, and the problem right now is that the error bars on the data are so wide that it doesn’t appear that any model is particularly more predictive than any other.

Well, so then why not do something just in case it might help? The answer to that is that everything we might do has a cost, and there may be other things that could better be done with the money. Bjørn Lomberg points out that we could ensure that everyone in the world has clean water for less than the cost of one year of Kyoto; we could buy and move surplus food to areas with not enough food for much less. If we’re going to be dogooding, should we do something that’s fairly certain to do some good?

Dec 19, 2004 - 3:53 pm 22. Charlie (Colorado):

BTW, RogerA, there’s a working email address in my TypeKey profile: chas r martin -at- netscape -dot- net. I tried mailing yours and got a bounce, so give mine a try.

Dec 19, 2004 - 3:58 pm 23. Terrye:

pothos:

I will read it too. I think the problem is that politcs and science have gotten too dependent on one another.

Dec 19, 2004 - 4:06 pm 24. pothos:

We’re agreed, Terrye. I just want to make sure that we keep our heads as clear as possible before we come to realize that every human endeavor is shaped, in part, by our intentions. The phenomenologists and hermenueticists worked that out a long time ago, but now it will make every newcomer to the idea conflate it, over-politically, with the “intentionality” of say, the MSM. Not the same thing.

Charlie, I agree that, on the face of it, there seems little we can do if warming is not anthropogenic, and maybe even if it is. The question as I was putting it to Roberts was meant to challenge a new set of counter-reactions that may be just as politically motivated as those our colleagues are aiming to expose. So, now to the science…

You stated perfectly the very thing that I learned from Lewontin, Gould, Eldridge and others. That the mere fact that we can construct any model doesn’t make the model correct, which Gould ridiculed as the adaptationist’s “panglossian paradigm”, at least in the field of biology. In his scenario evolutionary biologists routinely displace the unknowns of evolution into that endlessly receeding realm called “adaptation”. If adaptation doesn’t explain all things now then surely one day it will, thus removing any need to entertain any other possible mechanisms, and thus “Pangloss”.

The way you’ve posed the CO2 problem though is more like David Hume’s contention that, just because we observe that ‘A’ happens in repeated conjunction with ‘B’ we should not then infer that ‘A’ causes ‘B’, and so on … which gets empiricism nowhere fast. In terms of how far a limited empiricism should go towards influencing our policies – either within its foundational limits as illustrated by Hume, or in the limits imposed on any particular experiment as with climate modelling – here’s a good place to remember Wretchard’s “hueristics” comment (above).

Having said that, I’m wasn’t aware that in regard to CO2, “it doesn’t appear that any model is particularly more predictive than any other”. In terms of the initial consequences of greenhouse gas build-up, that would be news to me, and frankly, I doubt the truth of what you’re saying. Are you referring to the secondary effects of CO2 build-up that lead to cooling, like increased cloud reflectivity?

Anyway, doesn’t it strike you that Lomberg’s otherwise refreshing suggestion – which is meant to sell his books – encourages a debunking attitude which may result in a decrease of science funding? That’s very different from what Crichton is proposing – I think. My idea, probably closer to Crichton’s, would be to expend more effort cracking problems like fuel cells, or developing that ultimate dream-machine that would transform gaseous CO2 into limestone. All of these are worth doing. Certainly it makes more sense to develop the latter technology and then to decide later whether it wouldn’t behoove us to put more CO2 back into the system. We’d be sitting pretty in that case.

Dec 19, 2004 - 5:09 pm 25. Charlie (Colorado):

The way you’ve posed the CO2 problem though is more like David Hume’s contention that, just because we observe that ‘A’ happens in repeated conjunction with ‘B’ we should not then infer that ‘A’ causes ‘B’, and so on … which gets empiricism nowhere fast. In terms of how far a limited empiricism should go towards influencing our policies – either within its foundational limits as illustrated by Hume, or in the limits imposed on any particular experiment as with climate modelling – here’s a good place to remember Wretchard’s “hueristics” comment (above).

Pothos, Hume pretty well disposed of the notion that this makes empiricism useless at the same time as he posed the problem. Beyond that, there’s been a good lot of work done since Hume on the philosophical issues involved, eg, Popper and … oh, gee, Hungarian name, I’ve just gone blank. Oh, and Peirce, with “adduction”. Anyway, the point is that while empiricism can never deliver deductive certainty, there are still certain qualities that we expect of an empirically derived law, which to date the computer modeling approach to these climate issues doesn’t satisfy very well.

Among those are that the model should be distinguishable from other models with other causal drivers, and that one in particular is one the modeling “confirmations” of anthropogenic global warming appears to fail. I don’t really want to re-iterate them, so let me suggest you run back down the thread; RogerA, Chuck, Patrick, and I, among others, did them over in the first Crichton thread. The gist of it is that anthropogenic global warming as a hypothesis depends on models based around the original “hockey stick”. That hockey stick model shows effectively flat climate through periods we know historically were climatically very different, and the anthropogenic model depends upon that fairly flat baseline. As you note, there are good reasons, such as variation in effective albedo, not to mention the apparent fact that we’re at a Maunder maximum that’s heating up Mars as well, to question basic assumption in those models.

Given that the models are based on questionable interpretations of historical data and don’t appear to account for other data very well, I think it’s fair to question them.

They are, however, politically convenient for some people; sadly, as with the “nuclear winter” fad 15 years ago, political convenience sometimes outweighs scientific rigor in the minds even of the peer review boards.

But this is really secondary. Let’s assume, for the moment: that there is unusual global warming; that this global warming is primarily or wholly anthropogenic; that the mechanism is increased CO2 concentration; that we’ll continue to find cheap sources of carbonaceous fuels sufficient that the cost of other non-carbon energy sources will never be more economical; and that “Gaia’s” counteractions (like increased albedo, increased plant growth, etc.) are insufficient to maintain equilibrium sufficiently.

Then we’re still presented with two problems: (1) Kyoto wouldn’t make much difference; and (2) it would cost a lot.

And that’s the real problem: all the current approaches to dealing with global warming cost lots of money that could go into something more useful, in order to ameliorate a tiny fraction of a problem that we can’t actually be sure is even there.

Dec 19, 2004 - 8:39 pm 26. pothos:

Charlie (C), I turned in before I could see your final, well-considered words last night.

I apologize for having weighed in before reading the excellent comments following Roger’s first Crichton post.

You completed the rest of my Hume for me – the upshot being much the same – when I was merely sounding out the degree of your scepticism generally. It’s so hard to tell from a few blurbs where people are really coming from, but as I read the other page I understand better that you’re not about sophistry.

Like you I’m sceptical about the modeling, and I hope you can glean from my posts that I also view ‘Kyoto’ as quite dubious. But I’m sure you’ll agree that it would be a shame, not to mention foolish, to have the counter-anthropogenic argument predominantly formed by an equally dogmatic counter-rhetoric.

I think I’m beginning to see the outlines of an approach that is interested in the science only inasmuch as the data confirms one necessary finding: that global warming is the invention of “socialists”. That may well be true, but that doesn’t also mean that there isn’t warming, or that the outcome wouldn’t be as bad as your average anti-capitalist would like to believe. In that necessarily ill-informed denial of what may still come to pass – who really knows? – there may be a psychology at work that needs to rationalize chance above all else (which is why I brought up Lyell’s Uniformitarianism in relation to Crichton, not to mention Pangloss).

With lots to do today let me think about that initial conversation a little more. I may get fuzzy pretty quickly, especially where modeling is concerned, but my point is that we’re all out to sea a little here and just as soon clinging to this or that piece of cultural flotsam – the uniformitarian bias being one such artifact, catastrophism being another.

Frankly, I don’t understand why everone isn’t sounding fuzzy?

Dec 20, 2004 - 8:02 am 27. Charlie (Colorado):

I’m actually feeling fairly clear for the first time in days. Warning: this year’s ‘flu is a bad upper respiratory bug, a middling fever, and your IQ goes down 80 points for three days.

But you’re absolutely right: the real problem is that what ought to be a scientific question turns into an excuse. That’s much what happened with “nuclear winter”: the models involved were dubious at best, but the conclusions were too politically useful. Sagan and others consciously continued to use the nuclear winter models for political leverage long after the falsity of the models was well understood. But the falsification of the models didn’t mean nuclear winter would be a good thing.

Dec 20, 2004 - 8:13 am 28. Cynic:

In October Melanie Phillips had a post:

“The global warming scam”

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/000854.html

In which she lays out 5 articles that discuss research into temperature and CO2 relation.

“http://www.co2science.org/journal/v7/v7n42c1.htm

Article one says that a number of studies show that that ëthe decline in atmospheric CO2 concentration post-dated the decline in air temperature at the onset of the four glacial epochs that are evident in the Vostok ice core data.”

etc.

Dec 20, 2004 - 10:10 am 29. pothos:

C(CO), picked up the same bug you describe. In Virginia, three weeks ago. A middling fever – exactly – lasting only a few hours in my case, but massive upper-respiratory and sinus complications.

The Christmas orders are staring at me from the table, but how can I resist a good chat? (I’ll just have to try, but first …)

I wonder if you – a scientist/logician in Colorado – aren’t already a friend of mine? I know it’s a long-shot but you remind me of just such a Charlie. We’d have a mutual friend in NY, initials JAL? At any rate you and he would be most sympatico, which I gather is unusual in those parts of CO that might attract a Buddhist.

We’re agreed on excuse-making then; the middle way, as is usual, holding the best potential for open-mindedness. To revive the ghost of Hume yet again, isn’t it amazing how quickly these new concerns expose our individual values and customs? I’m speaking essentially of our respective cosmologies here, and I mean cosmology as a literary art. Whether they come in the form of Judeo-Christian customs or the customs and biases that must attend any interpretation, scientific or not, when it comes to climate it seems we’re immediately adrift in a discussion about values.

Your post reminded me that I once had a very heated discussion with Lynn Margulis, Sagan’s ex-wife. Most posters here would get the wrong idea upon learning that it was Margulis and Lovelock who penned the “Gaia Hypothesis”. To wit: she couldn’t share any of my ambivolence about genetic engineering since she adhered to the line that ‘we are ourselves nature, ergo anything we do … ‘ Perhaps she was selling a book then too, but her bombast looked like pure hubris to me. Whatever it took, she seemed to be saying, engineer it and get it out there. Evidently we had very different ideas about the biblical term “dominion”.

At the time I was working in molecular biology (a mere technician but still an enthusiast) so I didn’t and still do not propose a moratorium on all bio-tinkering. But coming from a more continental perspective I argued – after Adorno really – that we are in a compromised position in regard to nature, being neither of it, nor not of it.

As a non-Judeo-Christian American – insofar as that’s even possible – I’m still a traditionalist, but in a Burkean, and pragmatic sense (I enjoyed your reference to Peirce). And Gadamer too: if we’re thrown into the context and value-nexus that’s produced us then tradition ought to enjoy some degree of authority while also tempering our actions (and arguments).

Speaking politically, I see the greatest threat to this approach in the kind of dogmatic progressivism we increasingly associate with European thinking, something Burke identified long before us. But in terms of science and technology, potentially odious “progressivisms” are manifesting on either side of the current political divide.

This is what’s so difficult for me to parse on each occasion, but it always begin with the funky smell of “excuses” in the air.

Dec 20, 2004 - 10:24 am 30. M. Simon:

As we learn more about climate we are finding that CO2 follows the rise in temperatures rather than preceeds it.

Then there is a study coming out in 2006 that is likely to show that it is the sun that is driving climate change. What is one of the reasons that this idea is catching on? Global warming on Mars.

Global warming may be the ultimate in junk science.

Dec 20, 2004 - 11:45 am 31. M. Simon:

I always liked Alice Miller’s explanation of Hitler.

From my perspective it fits with what we are learning about the amygdala and pain/fear memories.

Phyllis Chessler chimes in on the relationship of child abuse to Mid East pathologies. Roger did a bit on it here. As I did on my blog.

Dec 20, 2004 - 12:10 pm

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