weather adjustment as a society

[burntcopper]

Achieved hat that actually covers my ears and looks halfway decent. Which makes me ponder if this weather (cold winters with snow) continues, how long the UK will take to adjust and take it in stride so everyone just goes 'oh. snow.' without it disrupting transport or work. Problem being that mass (electric) transport/motorways in the UK didn't exist the last time we had regular heavy snow in winter across the country, they only came in *after* the weather started getting warmer, so weren't built to cope with it. Hence why we don't have many snowploughs, wheel chains, or bloody great snowshovels in every garage. My parents are the only people in our street to own a proper snowshovel, and that's because they lived in Oklahoma.

It's relatively easy for individuals to adjust to cosmetic stuff. Since last winter, people are stocking up on more practical clothing and learning what kind of footwear is good for walking on ice and snow. Similar for buying blankets and getting insulation, as well as getting road salt and snowshovels. What I'm pondering is infrastructure. It's all very well to moan about the local councils not having sufficient snowploughs like in Russia, but snow ploughs are seriously expensive, and simply not worth buying if deep snow isn't a regular event. And as for rail, the rail network isn't even built to cope with wet autumns that frost over, or hot summers. Which we've been able to rely on for the last few decades.

So has anyone done any forecasts on how long it would take for society to adjust?

In related news, taking Meg up on her offer of the sofa bed tonight as have theatre expedition tomorrow to Legally Blonde and I don't really want to risk the rail network. last time they had warning, it was screwed. Course, this means I will have to buy clothing and makeup and will probably find that the rail network coped fine... I wouldn't have given a flying fuck and just stayed home if it wasn't for the theatre factor.

Comments

[gmh.livejournal.com]

...

With regard to Lomborg, I have a half-finished essay on him lying around at home; while there is some small merit to some of what he says, and critics are always needed, Lomborg's methods are frequently supported more by assertion than evidence; his figures are often either invented, quoted to a misleading degree of precision or just plain wrong.

(e.g. 'Technology Can Fight Global Warming' - WSJ 28/09/09:

'Some economic models find that target impossible to reach without drastic action, like cutting the world population by a third. Other models show that achieving the target by a high CO2 tax would reduce world GDP a staggering 12.9% in 2100—the equivalent of $40 trillion a year.

... Mr. Green's research suggests that investing about $100 billion annually in noncarbon based energy research could result in essentially stopping global warming within a century or so.'

Lomborg sets out the two diametrically-opposed plans: charging for emission which will beggar everyone (cue pantomime boos) and investment in clean technology (which will save everyone and make everyone rich - yay!)

These are cartoon positions (the UNEP estimate cost is 3% - and Lomborg doesn't apparently read the WSJ, despite writing articles for it:

'Despite the global economic slump, total clean-energy investment last year grew 5% to $155 billion.'

Renewable-Energy Investments Top Traditional Investments, Report Finds

- in other words, the required 'solution' for Lomborg is already in place; what he's arguing is essentially the free-market laissez-faire approach.

Which isn't terribly surprising, considering that his ideas expressed in The Skeptical Environmentalist are a partial rehash of Julian Simon's ultimate resource argument.

I've been arguing with disciples of Simon's position since 1995 - neither Simon nor Lomborg are physical scientists, and the assumptions behind the cornucopia theory are a) based upon some very dodgy logic-chopping around the nature of 'infinity' with regard to resources and b) somewhat in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; his argument does not apply in a situation where system entropy always increases.

Finally, there are enough documented examples of system failure in human societies to suggest that humanity is quite capable of stuffing things up bigtime; Jared Diamond's 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed' is a good work on the subject.

[mrslant]

If you're going to accuse Lomborg of inventing his figures, I think you need better evidence than the fact that a newspaper article he wrote is contradicted by someone else's press release.

You're also misrepresenting Simon's position, which is in fact clearly set out in the Wikipedia article you refer to. No one is suggesting that resources are physically infinite, but we're still waiting for any evidence that Malthus was right!

No, Lomborg's not a physical scientist, but then nothing in his writings seeks to question the climate science. He's a political scientist criticising the political-economic response.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

If you like, I will, though it's really not hard to find any number of fairly in-depth rebuttals of Lomborg's position.

Let's take an easy example from the WSJ article; the model Lomborg cites as costing 12.9% of GDP is by Richard Tol (The Analysis of Mitigation as a Response to Climate Change)

(Which was funded and commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, but that's by-the-by.)

Tol's model is selective to a worrying degree; it takes only the most conservative benefit analyses (e.g. Nordhaus), assumes that nothing ultimately changes until 2100, and then plumps for a CO2 target that is generally associated with a probable global mean surface temperature rise of ~3 deg C; and says effectively 'well, yes, there may be additional effects to deal with (as opposed to the 450 ppm ~2 deg C raise) plans, but I don't think they'll be terribly significant' (See section 2.3: Missing Impacts).

Does the WSJ article mention the revised 550ppm atmospheric CO2 level?

No.

Nor does the Reuters article covering the same press release.

So what it is actually saying is that limiting atmospheric CO2 to 450 ppm is likely to cost more than limiting it to 550 ppm. Which is hardly news; but neither is it a fair comparison to the likes of the Stern Report.

But this is where Tol's pick-and-choose approach to the analyses comes in; by choosing the models with the lowest benefits (i.e. the most optimistic models in terms of possible climate change impacts on humanity) he is playing down the potential negative costs of a given temperature scenario - whilst at the same time talking up the hypothetical fiscal efficiency of spending a given sum of money his way.

And yes, if nothing really bad will happen anyway, it makes sense to spend the money as efficiently as possible; but if there is a genuine risk of seriously Bad Stuff happening, then you pay out double if you don't budget for it.

For all of the scenarios outlined, there is a non-zero chance that climate change will cause one or more catastrophic results; I'm talking about (for example) rainfall patterns and the presence of nuclear-armed nations in water-poor areas (such as the Pakistan/India border or the Golan Heights); I'm talking about population pressure on land that is not capable of supporting the level of use humans make of it (like Rwanda).

These are potential costs that Tol does nothing to describe - bar dismissing them as 'relatively small'.

(The Red Cross World Disasters Report 1999 discusses climate-related human costs; alas, it's no longer available online.)

So, to recap: Lomborg is quoting the result from a somewhat selective study that he commissioned and using them to make an apples-to-oranges comparison to policy recommendations coming from Stern and the UN Environment Programme.

Again, Lomborg and Tol are both recommending limiting atmospheric CO2 to 550 ppm. The IPCC recommends a maximum of 450 ppm; and there are a number of scientists such as Hansen arguing for a reduction to 350 ppm to minimise risk to the biosphere.

Now, as you have agreed, Lomborg (and Tol) are not physical scientists. On what basis are they advocating a level of atmospheric CO2 that is a) greater than the IPCC recommendation and b) significantly greater than the stated opinion of James Hansen, who is a physical scientist in the relevant field?

It's getting a bit long; I'll post the Simon reply below.

[mrslant]

You only have to read the opening paragraph of your alleged "in-depth rebuttal" (which gives no indication as to its peer-review status, incidentally) to smell the prejudice: "In 1999 – compelled by the errors and misrepresentations voiced by Bjørn Lomborg, Associate Professor – the Danish Ecological Council published a book intended as a countermove."

Well, that's clearly an entirely unbiased and objective assessment...

Now, as I understand it your argument here is that Lomborg is a liar and a knave because something he wrote in a newspaper article refers to a paper by someone else entirely whose analysis you don't agree with, apparently on the basis that there's a "non-zero chance" of catastrophic results from climate change.

Well, as you know there's a non-zero chance that the sun will explode in the next three seconds, but I can confidently predict that it's not going to happen. There's a non-zero chance of winning the lottery, but it won't be you. In the real world, where people's lives and livelihoods are at stake, we don't make policy based on remote possibilities but on the likely outcomes. Which is exactly what Lomborg does in his book - which, as you seem to be fixated on some article in the WSJ, I presume you haven't read.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

Right. Ultimate Resource: the quick version.

As per the Wikipedia article:

'Simon argues not that there is an infinite physical amount of, say, copper, but for human purposes that amount should be treated as infinite because it is not bounded or limited in any economic sense, because:

* known reserves are of uncertain amounts
* new reserves may become available, either through discovery or via the development of new extraction techniques
* recycling
* more efficient utilization of existing reserves (e.g. "It takes much less copper now to pass a given message than a hundred years ago." [The Ultimate Resource 2, 1996, footnote, page 62])
* development of economic equivalents, e.g. optic fibre in the case of copper for telecommunications

The ever-decreasing prices (and thus decreasing scarcity) despite population growth suggest an enduring trend that will not cease in the foreseeable future.'

----

Right. firstly, in the book, Simon refers to copper, but also extends the analogy to oil:

("But the number of oil wells that will eventually produce oil, and in what quantities, is not known or measurable at present and probably never will be, and hence is not meaningfully finite.")

This is simply untrue; Simon's way of explaining this is that other things replace oil, ultimately devolving to the Sun and solar power; the term 'meaningfully' is used as a chimera.

But that fails to acknowledge how and why; and it utterly fails to take the cost of retooling and rebuilding your infrastructure into account; it doesn't simply blink into existence as and when it is needed.

For example; the transition from fossil fuel to other sources of energy requires a considerable downpayment in terms of resources and equipment. That expenditure needs to happen before you can get anything back on it; and if, for whatever reason, there isn't enough of a critical resource, then the change will simply not happen, no matter how much we might wish it.

Someone once posited space-based solar power to me as a possible solution to the energy crisis; either space-based cells or solar mirrors. We can't do it yet; and the possibility of our ever being able to do it is a big 'if'.

Leaving aside practical problems such as material outgassing in vacuum, high-energy particles, space debris, reliable attitude control and safe transmission of power back down to the ground, you've got the simple problem of the gravity well; the amount of energy expended to get a spacecraft into orbit is not trivial; it requires construction, transportation and safe launch; and that's if everything goes according to plan. The energy outlay to get a solar mirror or usefully large cell array into space is such that a spacecraft would have to operate more efficiently than current solar cells and for a longer time than the average spacecraft lifetime just to break even in terms of getting the thing up into space in the first place.

Secondly, Simon treats resources in isolation: he talks, for example, of the recycling of copper and the improvement of techniques for using copper; but not how this factors in with the availability of other key materials such as energy, manpower and transportation. Every time you reshape copper, you do so at an energy cost; and that energy is not necessarily sustainable or recoverable.

Finally, and most damningly to my mind, Simon simply fails to recognise (or does not say) that not all uses of a resource are equally recoverable; it depends upon the entropy of the system.

Take a lump of copper, split it in two, take one half and keep it as a lump of copper. Grind the other half up, mix it with sulphuric acid to form copper sulphate - and then dump that into the ocean.

The lump is trivially simple to recycle. The extremely diluted solution is nigh-on impossible to recycle; it is in a higher entropy state than the lump; and no amount of human ingenuity can address that; it's basic thermodynamics.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

...

In short, Simon posits that humanity will always be able to do something; to improve methods, to recycle, to find new resources; and that to talk of resource shortage is thus not meaningful.

(Correct me if you feel I'm misrepresenting his position here.)

Unfortunately, this doesn't square with the physics and it doesn't square with the history.

In physical terms, retooling requires spare energy; you have to keep running your society whilst also investing enough to develop new techniques; and once you have new techniques, you need to expend more energy to roll them out across your civilisation. Also, energy is not infinitely recoverable or renewable; as overall system entropy has to increase as per the Second Law.

In historic terms, there are any number of historic societies with intelligent, adaptable problem-solving humans which collapsed due to their inability to deal with resource shortage and related factors; the Easter Islanders, the Greenland Vikings, the Polynesians of Mangareva and Pitcairn, the Anasazi Pueblo, the Classic Mayans.

(It would be massively arrogant to assume we're significantly brighter or more inventive than the average Mayan or Anasazi!)

Julian Simon's cornucopia argument is ultimately faith-based - wishful inductive thinking. It's a religious position, not a rational one.

[mrslant]

This is the same old Malthusian argument. Attempting to criticise economics on the basis of thermodynamics is akin to arguing that we should be making preparations urgently for the day the sun runs out of fuel. The scale is out by orders of magnitude. The Earth's natural resources are vast, and there is simply no danger that we are going to use them up, particularly as technology becomes progressively more efficient, and as the world's population stabilises and then (probably) gradually declines (if the global fertility rate stabilises below 2).

The reason Greenland, Easter Island and the rest collapsed can be summed up in a word - isolation. Hence they were unable to import resources or export people. The modern, globalised world doesn't suffer from this problem - heck, in a few hundred years we could even be mining asteroids or colonising Mars - so is unlikely to suffer the same fate. No, we're not individually smarter than Mayans or Anasazis, but we do have greater accumulated knowledge and superior technology.

Anyway, we're clearly not going to agree on this so perhaps we should stop flooding burntcopper's journal!

[gmh.livejournal.com]

Fair enough; this will be my last comment, after which I will leave this subject well alone!

I would just like to conclude with a couple of short points.

Firstly: we are currently isolated on this planet. The gravity well is a harsh mistress, and any significant moves into space would require a massive investment in resource and capital - in a world where we cannot afford to feed and clothe the current inhabitants. Generally speaking, people prefer to know that they've got enough to eat before trying to engage in interplanetary exploration; theorising that technological advance will make resource use more efficient is all very well, but the gravity well remains a constant; and we're certainly nowhere near getting around that at present.

Secondly: if economics attempts to posit a theory based on the wilful misunderstanding (or ignorance) of the physical world, then it is going to get slapped down like the soft science it is.

Ye cannae break the laws of physics.