Sub's Alternative Energy Thread

[wufan]

I don't think that's necessarily fair. If something is legislated it's because enough people (or important enough people) have decided that the impact is so great that it's worth acting even if there is a risk of error.

Most environmentalists' calculation is that even if there's only a 60% chance of being able to prevent the coming harm, legislation is worth it because the impact is so great. This goes to @JamarHoward4President's point that it's not necessarily an infinitely large impact, so there should be a greater discussion surrounding the size of the impact of global warming.

My post about the logic was only a criticism of individuals that say global warming/the hockey stick theory/whatever else has definitively been proven false.

That's fair, so I will go into my next problem:

1. Greenhouse gasses cause warming
2. Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas
3. Carbon dioxide causes warming.
4. Man emits carbon dioxide through various means.
5. Man causes global warming.

This is an easy logical statement, and I'm generally okay with the science behind it. There's actually some indication that CO2 lags temperature changes due to the positive feedback loop, but that's not relevant here. What is relevant is that this is the argument put forth by scientists and the easy solution to the problem put forth by legislation is to:

6. Reduce carbon emissions by man.
7. If reduced, global warming is reduced.

That's the problem. It is true that CO2 is at an all time high...about 30% higher than seen in climate history, and about 50% higher than the start of the industrial revelation. That sounds bad right?

The number one greenhouse gas from man is CO2. CO2 is responsible for over 99% of the manmade greenhouse gasses. It's logical to think that if we reduce CO2, then global warming will be reduced, but for what percent is man responsible? It's actually less than 4% of all CO2. If you look at the climate models that have hockey stick shapes, you will see that a 4% reduction (halting ALL industrial activities that give off CO2) then the reduction is temperature would be about .02 degrees C (I can provide details if necessary). That's actually significant (if I guess) if you were willing to go back to the dark ages since 99% of manmade greenhouse gasses is CO2, but I left out a key issue. The number one greenhouse gas is water vapor. That's right, water vapor. 95% of global warming gasses (including man made and natural) is composed of totally benign water vapor. With this information (something that is not routinely shared in policy papers), you will find that the actual change in temp due to man made CO2 is only 5% of the previous 0.02 degrees, or a whopping 0.001 degrees C. That is insignificant, as is man's contribution to greenhouse gasses.

Why would we spend money trying to reduce manmade carbon when it is such an insignificant contributor to global warming?

Edit. The actual amount of water vapor is estimated between 80 and 95%, so maybe we a double hundredths of a degree less warmth by reducing carbon.

[jdshock]

That's fair, so I will go into my next problem:

1. Greenhouse gasses cause warming
2. Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas
3. Carbon dioxide causes warming.
4. Man emits carbon dioxide through various means.
5. Man causes global warming.

This is an easy logical statement, and I'm generally okay with the science behind it. There's actually some indication that CO2 lags temperature changes due to the positive feedback loop, but that's not relevant here. What is relevant is that this is the argument put forth by scientists and the easy solution to the problem put forth by legislation is to:

6. Reduce carbon emissions by man.
7. If reduced, global warming is reduced.

That's the problem. It is true that CO2 is at an all time high...about 30% higher than seen in climate history, and about 50% higher than the start of the industrial revelation. That sounds bad right?

The number one greenhouse gas from man is CO2. CO2 is responsible for over 99% of the manmade greenhouse gasses. It's logical to think that if we reduce CO2, then global warming will be reduced, but for what percent is man responsible? It's actually less than 4% of all CO2. If you look at the climate models that have hockey stick shapes, you will see that a 4% reduction (halting ALL industrial activities that give off CO2) then the reduction is temperature would be about .02 degrees C (I can provide details if necessary). That's actually significant (if I guess) if you were willing to go back to the dark ages since 99% of manmade greenhouse gasses is CO2, but I left out a key issue. The number one greenhouse gas is water vapor. That's right, water vapor. 95% of global warming gasses (including man made and natural) is composed of totally benign water vapor. With this information (something that is not routinely shared in policy papers), you will find that the actual change in temp due to man made CO2 is only 5% of the previous 0.02 degrees, or a whopping 0.001 degrees C. That is insignificant, as is man's contribution to greenhouse gasses.

Why would we spend money trying to reduce manmade carbon when it is such an insignificant contributor to global warming?

Edit. The actual amount of water vapor is estimated between 80 and 95%, so maybe we a double hundredths of a degree less warmth by reducing carbon.

I've heard two things on this front:

1. Human CO2 emissions are extra. There had been a relative balance in CO2 emissions vs absorption, but extra human emissions cause the balance to go away. I'm not a scientist. That's an explanation that makes sense to me, but that's not a very good indicator of its accuracy. The way it was explained to me, though, is let's say I burn as many calories in a day as I consume. It doesn't really matter whether I consume 2,000 or 3,500, as long as I burn them all. A 4% increase in calories is a relatively small increase in regards to the total amount of calories I consume, but it's an infinitely larger amount of calories that go unburned.

2. I've also heard several proposals for taking some of the CO2 and other GHG out of the atmosphere, not just reducing the amount we produce. I guess the idea is that even if there is a natural phenomenon involved in global warming, there's still the risk that it will make the Earth uninhabitable for humans, so it's important to slow warming.

[jdshock]

It seems to me that a deliberate and gradual retreat from low-lying coastal areas to avoid rising sea-levels would be major boon to the world economy. I know, it's an extreme proposition. But so is spending trillions upon trillions over decades on barely better than 50/50 odds of unpredictable benefit.

Both of these proposals would cost citizens trillions of dollars. It's just clear that rich people would pay more if it were funded via taxes. If we just move society to less coastal regions, even the poorest of families will be required to fund the move themselves.

Also, this assumes the only impact of global warming is sea level rise. There is also the risk of more unpredictable weather.

I'm also not really sure how you would pick where to move society. We'd obviously still want cities to have access to the ocean due to our shipping needs, so where do you move your big port cities? Do you move them just slightly inland so that they can function as a port city for fifty years? Do you move them very far inland and they won't be able to work as a port for another century or two? The same is true of agriculture. Key agricultural states might not be useful anymore. Where do you move your farms?

And what should the international community do for countries that do not really have an inland? Do we take a lot of immigrants from those countries? Should we just say the Japanese are out of luck?

[ShockBand]

Water vapor, being condensible, does have some behaviors that are different from non-condensible greenhouse gases.

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html

[rrshock]

A cheap way to help would be to plant trees, yet trees are bring chopped down at very fast rates. I don't completely buy into global warming, but trees absorb CO2 and if there aren't as many, then that hurts.

So I feel that if we are going to spend insane amounts of money on this, let's spend it in a way that makes more sense.

[rrshock]

Water vapor, being condensible, does have some behaviors that are different from non-condensible greenhouse gases.

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/c...t-the-co2.html

So would huge dehumidifiers help?

[Cdizzle]

So would huge dehumidifiers help?

Yes. Really, really big ones. Make sure they are hooked up to coal power plants.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

If something is legislated it's because enough people (or important enough people) have decided that the impact is so great that it's worth acting even if there is a risk of error.

I am not an expert on global warming. I do not *primarily* oppose spending trillions of dollars worldwide to fight it because of my scientific knowledge. Primarily, I oppose global warming because I hold a worldview about humanity, based on my entire life's experiences, that tells me that people are generally too confident about what they think they *know* as fact, too confident that they know the right solutions, and too eager to exercise power over others in the name of *solving problems*.

Many of the same people who are screaming the loudest about the need to fight global warming are the people that gave us ObamaCare. My judgment is that they made that problem worse, not better.

On top of all that, future scientific and technological advances always seem to surprise us. I can only imagine how many hilarious conversations I would find if I traveled back in time to the 1990s and visited corporate America. I bet I would die laughing at heated arguments over fax machine policies, totally oblivious to email coming right around the corner.

I donate plenty of money to charity, but I have limited resources, so I skip the charities I don't have full confidence in and stick with those who have proven to be reliable do good-ers. Similarly, its going to take a lot more convincing before I volunteer my money to fight this *supposed* problem with *supposed* solutions. It is hard for me to believe that $1 spent fighting global warming has a better return on investment (assuming it is even positive at all) than spending it on many other widespread problems. Government money *IS* my money, so the same principal applies to them as well.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

A cheap way to help would be to plant trees, yet trees are bring chopped down at very fast rates. I don't completely buy into global warming, but trees absorb CO2 and if there aren't as many, then that hurts.

So I feel that if we are going to spend insane amounts of money on this, let's spend it in a way that makes more sense.

At first thought, vast spending on strategic tree planting both for quantity and for aesthetic quality would seem like an outside the box compromise between both sides.

Of course, there is a good chance that the reality is that the cost/benefit ratio would be totally out of wack. If calcs showed we needed $100 trillion in trees to totally stop global warming, then a $1 trillion project might make things pretty for our eyes, yet put us more in debt while only solving 1% of the problem.

[jdshock]

It is hard for me to believe that $1 spent fighting global warming has a better return on investment (assuming it is even positive at all) than spending it on many other widespread problems. Government money *IS* my money, so the same principal applies to them as well.

I know I typically waste most of my good hypothetical questions in the relatively uninteresting gun debate threads, but...

I think it's interesting to hear people talk about large impacts with relatively small risks. What kind of government effort would you want to see put forth toward stopping an asteroid that has a 100% chance of causing a human extinction but only a 1% chance of striking Earth? I get that this totally glosses over your point that global warming might not be a extinction-level scenario. Obviously, I'm asking you to assume that in order for global warming to be stopped we would have to act now. I'm mostly just interested in hearing how people consider this kind of analysis.

Edit: I'm particularly interested in hearing if you believe it's just a simple calculation. Is a 1% risk to all of humanity the same as a 100% risk to 1% of humanity? Would a 1% risk of extinction be just as important of a risk as the certainty of 75 million people dying from starvation (or something).

[ShockBand]

Yes. Really, really big ones. Make sure they are hooked up to coal power plants.

Sun? What sun?

[ShockBand]

If we have things changing that we need to deal with, we should. If the water level is coming up, it doesn't matter what caused it if you are directly dealing with its effect. Kind of like Ron White's bit about the jogger who said he could withstand a hurricane by tying himself to a pole:

Okay, uh, let's get something straight. It's not that the wind is blowing, it's what the wind is blowing. If you get hit by a Volvo, it doesn't matter how many sit-ups you did that day. You're bleeding.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

I know I typically waste most of my good hypothetical questions in the relatively uninteresting gun debate threads, but...

I think it's interesting to hear people talk about large impacts with relatively small risks. What kind of government effort would you want to see put forth toward stopping an asteroid that has a 100% chance of causing a human extinction but only a 1% chance of striking Earth? I get that this totally glosses over your point that global warming might not be a extinction-level scenario. Obviously, I'm asking you to assume that in order for global warming to be stopped we would have to act now. I'm mostly just interested in hearing how people consider this kind of analysis.

Edit: I'm particularly interested in hearing if you believe it's just a simple calculation. Is a 1% risk to all of humanity the same as a 100% risk to 1% of humanity? Would a 1% risk of extinction be just as important of a risk as the certainty of 75 million people dying from starvation (or something).

Good questions. No, I don't have a solid formula to offer.

Rarely do we get to work with solid numbers in these cases. For example, what are our chances of success in stopping the asteroid, should it turn out to be headed our way? Do our chances increase proportionally with additional funding? (i.e., like shooting a half court shot for a prize, where each additional attempt effectively adds a similar new chance of success) Or, do we have one good solution that costs $10 billion to try, and we believe spending another $10 trillion would only double our chances of survival?

Not sure if I'm being helpful or not here.

[Cdizzle]

Alternatively, (a)if it costs $10 trillion to gain a 5% chance of success (random guess at half-court shot success rate) in preventing the 1% chance of 100% Earth-based extinction, (b)but we reason we have a 90% chance to sustainably move life to another planet for $20 trillion, which is the better approach?

(a) In the 99% where the extinction event does not occur due to natural causes, at best we will have wasted $10 trillion, and at worst we will have turned some of those 99% non-events into events by altering the dynamics of the situation. And if that is true in more than a handful of cases, we're actually worse off having tried anything at all. In the 1% where the extinction event would occur, we gain a 5% chance of survival (hooray!) and have a 95% chance of wasting $10 trillion but no one cares because extinction.

(b) Meanwhile, in the 99% where the extinction event does not occur due to natural causes, at best we will have established human life elsewhere in the galaxy and at worst we will have wasted $20 trillion without establishing life elsewhere. In the 1% where the extinction event does occur, everyone on Earth dies (assume 99.9999% of human life), but the species has a 90% chance of being established elsewhere.

Support your local moonshot initiatives!

[wufan]

Water vapor, being condensible, does have some behaviors that are different from non-condensible greenhouse gases.

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/c...t-the-co2.html

This is generally correct, but it's an oversimplification (as was my explanation above). Raw scientific measurements do point to a warming, and CO2 from humans is a part of it. The positive and negative feedback loops are intertwined and too complex for me based on the vast number of them, and their atmospheric and geographic regionality. My big issue remains: the climate models are set up in a manner that leads to a high probability of error. Major natural phenomenon are treated as afterthoughts. Policy makers push for change that is costly and ignores these important factors.