[extropy-chat] anthropogenic-climate-change skeptics in Oz

[Hal Finney]

Brent Neal writes:
> Go and actually read climatology journals.  There are precious few
> climatologists who will deny global warming exists. The argument currently
> (for everyone except left- and right-wing political ideologues with no
> real education) is which effects and to what extent human influence is
> affecting the climate.  And, just so that you make no mistake, there is
> no consensus on what that is. To say that most of them agree that global
> warming is mostly due to natural causes is either a gross misunderstanding
> or pure ideology.  Most climatologists (at least, those that are honest)
> will say that no one can say for sure, because no one knows whether the
> assumptions they are making are valid or not.

In the popular press I get the impression that there is actually a pretty
strong emerging consensus that the human contribution is very significant.
The precise details are still uncertain but I don't think many scientists
would still maintain that natural contributions overwhelm human ones.
Some excerpts from that article,
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/26/1101219743320.html?oneclick=true
(bugmenot.com gave me pharkedup/idea as a login to read it):

: The 2504 scientists and reviewers who work under the banner of the United
: Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) look
: set to make even stronger pronouncements about the role of humans on
: climate in their next assessment, due in 2007. The scientific mainstream
: has become more confident about how global warming is affecting the world,
: particularly in the past 10 years. The panel's chairman, Dr Rajendra
: Pachauri, told The Age: "One can say scientifically it is human action
: that is driving the bulk of changes that are taking place today."
: ...
: While William Kininmonth is respected by his former colleagues at
: the Bureau of Meteorology and they agree about the climate's natural
: variability, they disagree that recent warming is natural. In a review
: to be published in March in the Australian Meteorological Magazine,
: University of Melbourne associate professor of meteorology Kevin Walsh
: will argue that Kininmonth has failed to present the case for natural
: warming. "Some of his detailed arguments are a little bit curious,"
: Dr Walsh told The Age. "Some of his statements actually contradict
: well-accepted work."
:
: But strangely enough, the Lavoisier Group heard that message on Monday
: night. In what seemed like a coup, Hugh Morgan had secured the respected
: John Zillman, former head of the Bureau of Meteorology, to launch the
: book. Dr Zillman agreed, but made it clear that there were significant
: parts of the book that he disagreed with. Dr Zillman, who is known to
: be quite conservative about climate science, said he was concerned about
: appearing at a Lavoisier Group book launch, but did so in the interests
: of debate.
:
: He says he is not aware of any sceptic argument that has invalidated the
: mainstream science, and is now convinced - although would not have been
: 10 years ago - that it is mostly humans changing the world's climate. "I
: won't be expecting to be invited back as a regular," he said.

As we know, Russia recently ratified the Kyoto treaty which is sufficient
for it to go into effect.  It sets targets for the various nations to
reduce their emissions, although as this article notes, countries also
get credits for growing forests (and apparently, for failing to cut down
forests) which would help Australia, if they chose to participate.

I exchanged some email last year with a climatologist who strongly
supported Kyoto, and he made an interesting admission which I think is
widely accepted in the community.  He said that although he supported
Kyoto, and it would be "enormously difficult" for the U.S. and Japan in
particular to meet its standards, it would actually have "zero impact"
on climate!

So why support it?  Why support a policy which would impose tremendous
economic pain for zero benefit?  Because, he explained, it would set a
precedent for international cooperation to work on the problem of global
warming.  A successful Kyoto implementation would pave the way for future
accords, ones with some real bite to them, that could genuinely reduce
greenhouse emissions.  That was his reasoning, anyway.

Like many of us here, I have greater expectations for the rate of
future technological advancement than society as a whole.  This would
suggest that we will be able to handle global warming at a relatively
much lower cost a few decades from now than today.  Nanotech and other
advanced technologies will put us into position to be able to remediate
and even reverse the effects of global warming.  And the world will be
much wealthier and more powerful than today, making the costs of fixing
the problem relatively cheap.

Now, I can understand why policy makers can't afford to rely on pie
in the sky future projections to avoid present problems.  There is no
guarantee that our hoped-for technologies will actually work, and if
they don't and we leave the problem for the future, we will have a real
mess on our hands.

This is another area where Robin Hanson's "futarchy" concept could
work well.  If society can agree on goals for some measure that balances
future economic production against environmental quality, futarchy can
set the levels of greenhouse reductions which will best achieve those
goals, and then greenhouse emission markets (which I understand Kyoto
will experiment with) can find optimal ways to reach those emission
targets.  Everything happens efficiently with a minimum of bureaucratic
and political interference (which means every bureaucrat and politician
will oppose this loss of power).

Hal

P.S. Some http://www.ideosphere.com/ Foresight Exchange (play money idea
futures) claims relating to global warming:

WarmSU     Pres Mentions Global Warming
The president will use the phrase "global warming" in a state of the
union address before 2008.  Last trade means 60% probability.  Had been
trading at 80% prior to the election.

CO2LVL  CO2 Level 2030
Prediction of CO2 level in 2030.  Current price implies a level of
476 PPM.  Was 376 in 2003.  FX is predicting an average increase of
3.7 PPM/year over the next 30 years.  The highest increase rate so far
observed was 2.9 PPM/year in 1997-1998, and FX is predicting that the
*average* rate will become much higher than this(!).

SLvl   1 m rise in Sea Level
Sea level will rise 1 meter by 2030 over the 1994 level.  Last trade
32% (!!!).  I don't know what the market is thinking, I just took
a negative position on this.  No one with a shred of credibility is
predicting this kind of rise.