I am not disputing anything that you have said. If you and every climate scientist in the world want to believe that the underlying causalities are not important, God bless everyone. I don't have a problem with that. If it turns out that the Navy is right then no doubt something is going to happen that we haven't fully considered.
I am assuming the Navy has a mathematical model attached to a series of causalities. If the thermosphere doesn't contract, then something in that model isn't kosher.
Counting space junk seems like a crude way to test a hypothesis to back up their logic they are also saying that satellites will begin to experience less drag.
That's an issue an engineer can get his teeth into.
Maybe I should back up a step and talk about what is good science and what will never be good science. Science can only test hypotheses based upon a theory.
This isn't my opinion, it was taught to me first in the classroom, and later by some of the best scientists in the world in their respective fields. It is not a matter of semantics.
First, a good scientist never tries to prove any theory, because he already knows that it can't be done the reasons are complicated and I want to be brief. Let's take it as a definition, true science isn't in the business of proving theories. Why? First, every theory depends upon assumptions, which cannot be tested at the time the theory was written. There are a variety of other reasons, but the one I like best is this: any properly formed theory leads to a series of mathematical relationships together with stated causal relationships, which seem to bind the mathematics together. There is a problem in that more than one causal theory can always be found to support the same relationships described by the math. If you want a good example of this look for a book, titled Autodynamics. I forget the authors name, but what he did was to take the basic assumptions of relativity and change them Interestingly the math stayed the same, but the predictions changed. I am not a physicist so I wasn't capable of judging some of the assertions. I had a world class biophysicist look at it. He basically said "well, it isn't a lie." This is nearly always the case all you have to do is switch the assumptions, rearrange the basic equations and the implications can change usually dramatically. This is usually not understood. If the math works out, the usual inclination is to say that the theory is true. Nothing could be farther from true science.
If someone wants to use science to prove a point and then say that the science is irrelevant fine.
The usual reason that a theory cannot be adequately proven is that there is not enough empirical evidence.. as of yet.
Thus, Newton got his "Law of Gravity", and Einstein got his "Theory of Relativity".
But, in the 'for profit' world, inadequate proof is a defense for continuing to conduct business while harming the population with your product. Automobiles, firearms, pesticides have killed quite a few people, but we are told they are quite safe.
(removed this exaggeration - Automobiles have killed more than all the wars since the dawn of time)
On and on it goes...
Pondering what is scientific proof in the context of enterprises that choose to defend themselves cleverly against obvious negative impacts is the heart of the dilemma.
In sum, their is a momentum in 'selfishness' that propels us into harm's way.
If you and every climate scientist in the world want to believe that the underlying causalities are not important, God bless everyone. I don't have a problem with that. If it turns out that the Navy is right… then no doubt something is going to happen that we haven't fully considered.
I didn't say it was not important. I said it was not relevant.
I am assuming the Navy has a mathematical model… attached to a series of causalities. If the thermosphere doesn't contract, then something in that model isn't kosher.
Counting space junk seems like a crude way to test a hypothesis…to back up their logic they are also saying that satellites will begin to experience less drag.
That's an issue an engineer can get his teeth into.
And I have offered you a scientific explanation as to why this behavior can be expected to occur in the presence of CO2 induced global warming.
Maybe I should back up a step and talk about what is good science and what will never be good science. Science can only test hypotheses based upon a theory.
This isn't my opinion, it was taught to me first in the classroom, and later by some of the best scientists in the world… in their respective fields. It is not a matter of semantics.
First, a good scientist never tries to prove any theory, because he already knows that it can't be done… the reasons are complicated and I want to be brief. Let's take it as a definition, true science isn't in the business of proving theories. Why? First, every theory depends upon assumptions, which cannot be tested at the time the theory was written. There are a variety of other reasons, but the one I like best is this: any properly formed theory leads to a series of mathematical relationships together with stated causal relationships, which seem to bind the mathematics together. There is a problem in that more than one causal theory can always be found to support the same relationships described by the math. If you want a good example of this… look for a book, titled Autodynamics. I forget the authors name, but what he did was to take the basic assumptions of relativity and change them… Interestingly the math stayed the same, but the predictions changed. I am not a physicist so I wasn't capable of judging some of the assertions. I had a world class biophysicist look at it. He basically said…"well, it isn't a lie." This is nearly always the case… all you have to do is switch the assumptions, rearrange the basic equations and the implications can change… usually dramatically. This is usually not understood. If the math works out, the usual inclination is to say that the theory is true. Nothing could be farther from true science.
You have an odd notion of how science is actually done. Please read this for a better description.
If someone wants to use science to prove a point and then say that the science is irrelevant… fine.
I'm not saying that science is irrelevant, I'm saying your arguments are. If you can come up with some relevant and peer-reviewed science to support your case, then please do so. I have done so at every point.
So you are telling me there is some viral crackpot theory circulating the inter-tubes that proposes that if we fetch all of the fossil fuel out of the ground and burn it then it will add huge amounts of CO2 and Smile to the atmosphere. Consequent to that there will be a run away "green house" effect that causes global temperature rise, thus melting the ice caps, thus causing sea levels to rise, thus inconveniencing billions of humans by flooding them out and destroying the economic infrastructure. Resulting in a collapse of civilization, starvation, disease and death. Possibly the end of the human race itself?
Jees, how absurd is that? Some people will believe anything...
Having had something of a scientific training myself I maintain that:
a) If you can't measure it, it does not exist.
b) Correlation does not prove causation.
c) The scientific method, hypothesis, experiment and all that, is the best tool we humans have.
As such I propose a simple experiment to get to the truth or otherwise of this bizarre proposition:
Let's dig all the fossil fuel out of the ground and burn it. Let's observe the outcome and carefully measure what happens.
What's that you say, "This experiment is already under way, it's far from over and there is dispute about the results so far".
Good, let me know when it's done. I'll be interested in the results.
What there's more you say, "There is a whole bunch of climate researchers and strange green people that want to stop this experiment before the results are in"
Bah, that's not very scientific of them now is it? Don't they realize this is valuable fundamental research? They must be charlatans or have a political agenda. Just ignore them and continue, after all we have invested so much in this experiment already over a couple of hundred years.
Besides halting the experiment now, is going to cause chaos and much inconvenience anyway. You can't run your big cars and trucks, ships and aeroplanes off of stupid little windmills and solar panels. Industry would collapse without burning fossil fuel. People would have to give up their air conditioning. It would be the end of civilization as we know it. Perhaps cause more starvation, suffering and death than the proposed "global warming" effects.
Just carry on. In the mean time I'm going to fret about the real threads to human existence as described by an Oxford professor here: http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html You would think that with potential catastrophes looming people would have something better to worry about than a bit of soot in the air.
Just carry on. In the mean time I'm going to fret about the real threads to human existence as described by an Oxford professor here: http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html You would think that with potential catastrophes looming people would have something better to worry about than a bit of soot in the air.
Ha! I like his solution to the threat of global warming - "Hopefully, however, we will have technological means of counteracting such a trend by the time it would start getting truly dangerous."
Since this has already occurred, and he hasn't actually noticed **, this fills me with confidence that he knows what he's talking about.
Ross.
** To be fair, this paper was written in 2002, at which time the evidence of global warming was not as clear cut as it is now.
How about the upcoming death of over 6 billion people over the next 100 years due to Old Age.
Oh my God. That's terrible. I thought guys like you were working on that though.
Still, our professor there has defined his "Existential threats" as threats that could extinguish humanity in it's entirety, not just be a bad day for a few of them occasionally.
Automobiles have killed more than all the wars since the dawn of time, but we are told they are quite safe.
Hmm, if I think of the numbers killed by our grand parents in WW II alone - I doubt that.
Global warming happens, I believe it's our fault but I don't think mankind will do anything about it until masses die by this. I think earth will be a nice place to live for the 20-40 years I'm still facing (I hope). And I feel lucky to have no kids.
Automobiles have killed more than all the wars since the dawn of time, but we are told they are quite safe.
This is not true.
Deaths due to War:
World war I - 16 million.
World war II - estimates from 50 million to over 80 million.
Korean War - About 1 million
Vietnam war - Nearly 4 million
Rwandan genocide - About 1 million.
Total deaths due to conflict since WWII - About 20 million.
Deaths due to traffic:
World wide in 2010 - 1.24 million.
Still, our professor there has defined his "Existential threats" as threats that could extinguish humanity in it's entirety, not just be a bad day for a few of them occasionally.
"We need more research into existential risks detailed studies of particular aspects of specific risks as well as more general investigations of associated ethical, methodological, security and policy issues. Public awareness should also be built up so that constructive political debate about possible countermeasures becomes possible.
Now, its a commonplace that researchers always conclude that more research needs to be done in their field. But in this instance it is really true. There is more scholarly work on the life-habits of the dung fly than on existential risks."
This paper was written in 2002 I think we could identify more existential threats today. One point that Nick doesn't address is that combinations of lesser risks can potentially
contribute to in particular "risk pathways," through quasi-Markovian processes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain
If you have never heard of Markov chains, Markov created some very useful concepts. At the time Markov was writing, it was not understood that the same mathematics that describes random processes also treats information exchange processes. So, while the literature emphasis is on "random events." The math that we use to describe those events is almost exactly the same as for events ordered by information. This doesn't mean that Markov was wrong only that his concepts can be applied to processes, which can be shown not to be random.
Doctors just collect a fee for stalling or comforting, but everyone has the right of way to the graveyard.
Discussions of trends of any sort is rather annoying speculation. Dire warnings are rather morbid.
Nonetheless, pollution stinks, poisons, and debilitates. We don't need global warming to have good reasons to address pollution.
Conspiring to sustain a trend may just be good business for many established enterprises.
It is disheartening that Beijing tried so hard to provide a shining image of the city during the Olympics, and now it, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are all shouded in severe smog that even floats over to where I live to provide a few miserable days each year.
Deaths due to War:
World war I - 16 million.
World war II - estimates from 50 million to over 80 million.
Korean War - About 1 million
Vietnam war - Nearly 4 million
Rwandan genocide - About 1 million.
Total deaths due to conflict since WWII - About 20 million.
Deaths due to traffic:
World wide in 2010 - 1.24 million.
Besides, who is telling you automobiles are safe?
The automotive industry says automobiles are safe.
You only provide the death rate for 2010.
Can you clarify 'due to traffic'? Can we count deaths due to air pollution, drunk driving incidents, pedestrians killed, mechanical failure, brake failure, automotive air pollution, and such?
Still you do have a point. And yet..
"In its first century, the automobile has resulted in more deaths than the First World War."
I suppose that is what I should have said and referenced this source.
People who what to sell you stuff are hardly going emphasise the danger.
Yes I only quoted 2010. You were supposed to fill in the rest.
We could assume 1.24 million traffic deaths per year since the beginning of the automobile. That would only be about 120 million. More realistically we could assume a linear growth since the start, that would only be a total of 60 million. Even more realistically there has probably been an exponential growth so only about 30 or 40 million deaths due to traffic, ever.
You can compare to the total deaths due to recent human conflict given and see that your original statement is not likely correct.
I'm sure those stats don't take into account anything that is not immediately traffic related, basically collisions between cars or cars and humans.
Not that I'm saying we should just accept traffic fatalities as a normal part of life, far from it.
I am a doctor. My general attitude about my own profession is far worse than yours. I don't think your characterization is fair but it is far more gentle than the profession deserves right now.
I would like to look at the logic about private versus public transportation. I would prefer to fly everywhere I go, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it on public airlines.
Every movie about pandemics includes air transportation as a causal link that promotes the deadliness of the doomsday bug. But even if we don't have a global pandemic,
all forms of public transport force you to breath the same air as everyone else, to sit on the same seats as everyone else and to touch the same hand rail as everyone else. The total impact on health of repeated exposures like this isn't really known but cannot be zero. Some of those impacts no doubt lead to deaths at some unknown point after the contacts days, weeks, decades. These effects don't show up in transportation safety statistics. So really what this article implies to me is that we should substitute unknown risks for known risks. When a future epidemic is shown to have been facilitated by public transportation of any kind the mortality and morbidity statistics of public transportation will have to be reconsidered. This kind of causality is probably the norm, likely to become a fixture in future debates. We have a new global epidemic almost every year. A very common mode of transmission is through public spaces: schools, churches, doctor's offices, and public transportation. We know that this is true we just don't know what it should mean to us, yet. Health effects that are independent of epidemic statistics are also likely to be very important, but the science in this area is not yet on a par with epidemiology. Reason can tell us that non-epidemic health effects are going to be an important element of the public debate about the structure of our societies, when it becomes possible to speak intelligently about it. It might be the elephant in the room.
...force you to breath the same air as everyone else, to sit on the same seats as everyone else and to touch the same hand rail as everyone else...
Arguably living in a "bug soup" like that has made the human race as a whole more resistant. Sharing all those bugs is good thing.
I don't recall any plagues running around a decimating whole populations in my life time. The last such pandemic I'm aware of was in 1918, just at the beginning of the take up of all this germ ridden mass transportation. That killed 30 odd million people. More that the First World War. http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
Suggests to me you should not fear the hand rails on buses.
On the other hand of course, I do worry about antibiotic resistant bugs and those monsters they create in biological research labs that escape every now and then....
I am a doctor. My general attitude about my own profession is far worse than yours. I don't think your characterization is fair… but it is far more gentle than the profession deserves right now.
Medicine is pretty good in Taiwan. Doctors do indeed to a lot of good, work extremely hard, and hold themselves to higher standards than most of us.
What is so hard for doctors in the USA today is that they have been overrun by malpractise litigatation, big insurance dicating their practice, and marketing of equipment and medications. Pretty much the same influences that we feel are causing us to feel powerless to resolve global warming. I can recall when my dad's malpractise insurance tripled in on go and the premium went to about $300,000/year (it was a partnership). Having to earn $1000 per day before being able to show a profit is beyond me.
BTW, my dad was an M.D and so was my grandfather. Dad entered Stanford at the age of 16 in 1931 (or maybe '33). .. chief of staff for his hosipital, president of the local medical association, chairman of the state delegation to the AMA... for 5 years.
In a world where everyone should be a consumer, consumers make lousy patients just because their expectations are unrealistic -- nobody lives forever and good health is a partnership with the medical community. Doctors can't do much for those that abuse their own bodies.
The real question with medicine is the same as with global warming. Who is consistently throwing a roadblock in the way to doing the right thing for the good of all?
Good points all. I know many outstanding doctors. But in my opinion, the profession is a complete mess, here. And it seems to bring out the absolute worst in a small percentage of the doctors… and the profession seems incapable of doing anything about it. I have seen terrible things happen that I would never have believed possible, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes or experienced it as a patient I probably wouldn't believe it. Goes way beyond anything you could easily relate to.
Ordinarily, you would trust that as you went up the food chain in the medical world, you would get higher levels of
professionalism and ethics… that is the way it should be. That kind of order seems to have completely evaporated in many places.
In small towns with stable populations, people are somewhat protected by their personal knowledge of the doctors. If you asked the average Joe who the best doctors in town are… you would generally get the right answer.
By the way, I spent a summer at Stanford as part of my training. If I had never been there, I would have never guessed how beautiful it is in that area.
All of the discussions about ancient records that I am finding ultimately refer back to Vladavostok Ice Core studies. I am probably missing a huge area of data:)
But at least what I am finding all seems to refer to that one very careful
study.
What we see is that each event can be described as a period of heating followed by a period of cooling. What seems clear to me is that when we look at the 5 cycles that reach
peak levels the front side of the curves(the heating part of the cycle) is almost a straight line up and the backside (the cooling period) is anything but a straight line down.
The interval between evens is not constant in the earliest events the period between events is shorter and in the later record, the interval is longer.
The other interesting thing about this graph is that the peak temperatures aren't maintained. They appear as sharp spikes and then quickly disappear from the record. This suggests to me that something happens at peak temperatures to cause a cooling cycle to begin or that the initial cause of the heating somehow reverses itself (such as could happen with either a solar origin or an orbital cause). From the Naval Research Laboratory's statement, I wonder if a contraction of the thermosphere might be related to the reversals.
Deaths due to War:
World war I - 16 million.
World war II - estimates from 50 million to over 80 million.
Korean War - About 1 million
Vietnam war - Nearly 4 million
Rwandan genocide - About 1 million.
Total deaths due to conflict since WWII - About 20 million....
Don't forget the Taiping Rebellion. 20 million minus. I think they used hockey sticks on each other.
All of the discussions about ancient records that I am finding ultimately refer back to Vladavostok Ice Core studies. I am probably missing a huge area of data:)
But at least what I am finding all seems to refer to that one very careful study.
What we see is that each event can be described as a period of heating followed by a period of cooling. What seems clear to me is that when we look at the 5 cycles that reach
peak levels the front side of the curves(the heating part of the cycle) is almost a straight line up and the backside (the cooling period) is anything but a straight line down.
The interval between evens is not constant in the earliest events the period between events is shorter and in the later record, the interval is longer.
The other interesting thing about this graph is that the peak temperatures aren't maintained. They appear as sharp spikes and then quickly disappear from the record. This suggests to me that something happens at peak temperatures to cause a cooling cycle to begin or that the initial cause of the heating somehow reverses itself (such as could happen with either a solar origin or an orbital cause). From the Naval Research Laboratory's statement, I wonder if a contraction of the thermosphere might be related to the reversals.
rjo__, you really need to find some alternative sources of information, or at least understand the ones you are using a bit better. The graph you included is often quoted by people trying to disprove climate change, since it stops at 1990 - i.e. about the time CO2 started to climb uncontrollably. But this is a misunderstanding of the key point of the graph, which is that it is evidence of a very strong correlation between CO2 and temperature that has existed for the past 425,000 years.
Since CO2 is now rising more rapidly than at any time during that entire period, your graph is actually providing evidence that we are also likely to see a concurrent temperature rise. Here is what CO2 lconcentrations look like over the same period, but also including the present day. Look at the right hand edge. So if you believe the evidence of your graph, you must also believe in climate change:
See here for more details on the above graph. If you want to see how it looks when temperature and C02 are combined, and the timeframe is extended to the present day, then someone has done that for you as well - here. And this is what it looks like:
Good points all. I know many outstanding doctors. But in my opinion, the profession is a complete mess, here. And it seems to bring out the absolute worst in a small percentage of the doctors… and the profession seems incapable of doing anything about it. I have seen terrible things happen that I would never have believed possible, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes or experienced it as a patient I probably wouldn't believe it. Goes way beyond anything you could easily relate to.
Ordinarily, you would trust that as you went up the food chain in the medical world, you would get higher levels of
professionalism and ethics… that is the way it should be. That kind of order seems to have completely evaporated in many places.
In small towns with stable populations, people are somewhat protected by their personal knowledge of the doctors. If you asked the average Joe who the best doctors in town are… you would generally get the right answer.
By the way, I spent a summer at Stanford as part of my training. If I had never been there, I would have never guessed how beautiful it is in that area.
Rich
I know on the surface that it may seem global warming and the USA medical situation may not be related... but please consider the possibility.
The expansion of complexity in regulation and oversight has ussurped public participation in determining who is accountable for what.
Medicine is supposedly an ethical culture which is in control of its knowledge and actions by peer review. The average person turns to them in times of need with trust in their skills, opinion, and desire to do the right thing.
Enter law makers, insurance industries, and huge rewards for thoses that create products that people must use on a daily basis to cope with daily living.
The current results, doctors have lost control over their income via huge insurance overheads and via insurance companies telling them what they can have rather than allowing them to charge what the need. Suppliers dazzle them with new innovations that may not be all that good, but have a patent to reap profits. And of course, the fact that law makers are dependent upon political contributions provides the means for gridlock on any balancing of the power by limiting the liability of doctors to reasonable malpractice compensation.
I see that Japan has just sold two very high-tech super-heated steam coal fired electrical plants to Indonesia. Coal fired? Well they claim that their technology will reduce CO2 emissions over what exists now... maybe true. But natural gas would likely do even better.
The average voter just learns of these things when they are done deals. But they first become a matter of policy, enter an agenda of possiblities, get short listed... long before they happen. That is all behind the scenes.
What we don't see is reports of what consistently gets bumped to lower priorites because something seemingly new and wonderful jumps the queue. That is commonly called 'pork barrel' legislation, but is done in more ways than mere legislation.
+++++++++++
What we really need is far more transparency about agenda, policy, and short listing.
Then the public can participate in what gets what priority. Or sees that only worthy items are expedited. And I doubt that is going to be gotten easily.
It is a huge undertaking and the powers that be rely on most of the public preferring to follow the NBA or Soccer or the shopping channel.
The correlation between CO2 increases and temperature seems irrefutable. I don't see how anyone could possibly dispute it…. It isn't just now… but as far back as the ice record takes us.
Current data is no doubt a lot more accurate than data that is inferred from ice records. The only point I was trying to make is that global heating and cooling cycles have existed as far back as we can look.
Loopy,
I don't think it has much to do with global heating, but I couldn't agree more. This has happened largely because of the behavior of organized medicine. Most of the changes that we have seen are the direct result of either lobbying by organized medicine or with the tacit approval of organized medicine. Somewhere along the way, our organized brethren came to the conclusion that doctors were making too much money and had too much autonomy… the cure turns out to be worse than the disease they were trying to treat.
I was very interested in medical research… but I wasn't crazy about hanging by a thread and constantly re-applying for the right to continue my own research. My solution was to fund my own research. I led a very productive private research life… none of it was worth very much in monetary terms, but it was interesting and led to me having a better understanding of fundamental issues. That strategy simply isn't possible today. My choice is not an option today. It no longer exists.
When you make a doctor into an employee of the "insurance company" (as we have now done in many places), he might still be a good doctor, but his capacity to make the most important choices about his life or yours has been crippled. The insurance company does that now. I don't think the average person understands what little power a doctor has to direct care. Medicine is being managed as though it is a defined set of services or a commodity… by people that really don't understand medicine at all. At the same time all of these major changes were occurring, medical theory continued to change. You can't really regulate medicine… but you can stop it in its track by saying "this is what a disease is… and this is how you should treat it." That is what has happened here. American medicine might as well have been put into a time capsule and sealed up for posterity.
The correlation between CO2 increases and temperature seems irrefutable. I don't see how anyone could possibly dispute it . It isn't just now but as far back as the ice record takes us.
Current data is no doubt a lot more accurate than data that is inferred from ice records. The only point I was trying to make is that global heating and cooling cycles have existed as far back as we can look.
Yes, indeed. All you need to do now is take the next logical step, which is to acknowledge that pushing a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in volumes not seen for the last 425,000 years is probably a pretty dumb thing to do.
Comments
I am assuming the Navy has a mathematical model attached to a series of causalities. If the thermosphere doesn't contract, then something in that model isn't kosher.
Counting space junk seems like a crude way to test a hypothesis to back up their logic they are also saying that satellites will begin to experience less drag.
That's an issue an engineer can get his teeth into.
Maybe I should back up a step and talk about what is good science and what will never be good science. Science can only test hypotheses based upon a theory.
This isn't my opinion, it was taught to me first in the classroom, and later by some of the best scientists in the world in their respective fields. It is not a matter of semantics.
First, a good scientist never tries to prove any theory, because he already knows that it can't be done the reasons are complicated and I want to be brief. Let's take it as a definition, true science isn't in the business of proving theories. Why? First, every theory depends upon assumptions, which cannot be tested at the time the theory was written. There are a variety of other reasons, but the one I like best is this: any properly formed theory leads to a series of mathematical relationships together with stated causal relationships, which seem to bind the mathematics together. There is a problem in that more than one causal theory can always be found to support the same relationships described by the math. If you want a good example of this look for a book, titled Autodynamics. I forget the authors name, but what he did was to take the basic assumptions of relativity and change them Interestingly the math stayed the same, but the predictions changed. I am not a physicist so I wasn't capable of judging some of the assertions. I had a world class biophysicist look at it. He basically said "well, it isn't a lie." This is nearly always the case all you have to do is switch the assumptions, rearrange the basic equations and the implications can change usually dramatically. This is usually not understood. If the math works out, the usual inclination is to say that the theory is true. Nothing could be farther from true science.
If someone wants to use science to prove a point and then say that the science is irrelevant fine.
Thus, Newton got his "Law of Gravity", and Einstein got his "Theory of Relativity".
But, in the 'for profit' world, inadequate proof is a defense for continuing to conduct business while harming the population with your product. Automobiles, firearms, pesticides have killed quite a few people, but we are told they are quite safe.
(removed this exaggeration - Automobiles have killed more than all the wars since the dawn of time)
On and on it goes...
Pondering what is scientific proof in the context of enterprises that choose to defend themselves cleverly against obvious negative impacts is the heart of the dilemma.
In sum, their is a momentum in 'selfishness' that propels us into harm's way.
Ross.
Jees, how absurd is that? Some people will believe anything...
Having had something of a scientific training myself I maintain that:
a) If you can't measure it, it does not exist.
b) Correlation does not prove causation.
c) The scientific method, hypothesis, experiment and all that, is the best tool we humans have.
As such I propose a simple experiment to get to the truth or otherwise of this bizarre proposition:
Let's dig all the fossil fuel out of the ground and burn it. Let's observe the outcome and carefully measure what happens.
What's that you say, "This experiment is already under way, it's far from over and there is dispute about the results so far".
Good, let me know when it's done. I'll be interested in the results.
What there's more you say, "There is a whole bunch of climate researchers and strange green people that want to stop this experiment before the results are in"
Bah, that's not very scientific of them now is it? Don't they realize this is valuable fundamental research? They must be charlatans or have a political agenda. Just ignore them and continue, after all we have invested so much in this experiment already over a couple of hundred years.
Besides halting the experiment now, is going to cause chaos and much inconvenience anyway. You can't run your big cars and trucks, ships and aeroplanes off of stupid little windmills and solar panels. Industry would collapse without burning fossil fuel. People would have to give up their air conditioning. It would be the end of civilization as we know it. Perhaps cause more starvation, suffering and death than the proposed "global warming" effects.
Just carry on. In the mean time I'm going to fret about the real threads to human existence as described by an Oxford professor here:
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html You would think that with potential catastrophes looming people would have something better to worry about than a bit of soot in the air.
Ha! I like his solution to the threat of global warming - "Hopefully, however, we will have technological means of counteracting such a trend by the time it would start getting truly dangerous."
Since this has already occurred, and he hasn't actually noticed **, this fills me with confidence that he knows what he's talking about.
Ross.
** To be fair, this paper was written in 2002, at which time the evidence of global warming was not as clear cut as it is now.
Well that was written 13 years ago, long before the crack pot's started blowing the global warming threat out of proportion:)
Yes, I did notice that - and amended my criticism!
Existential threats? How about the upcoming death of over 6 billion people over the next 100 years due to Old Age.
I thought we were all part of the experiment to show what the meaning of life, the universe and everything question really meant? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life.2C_the_Universe.2C_and_Everything_.2842.29
Still, our professor there has defined his "Existential threats" as threats that could extinguish humanity in it's entirety, not just be a bad day for a few of them occasionally.
Global warming happens, I believe it's our fault but I don't think mankind will do anything about it until masses die by this. I think earth will be a nice place to live for the 20-40 years I'm still facing (I hope). And I feel lucky to have no kids.
Deaths due to War:
World war I - 16 million.
World war II - estimates from 50 million to over 80 million.
Korean War - About 1 million
Vietnam war - Nearly 4 million
Rwandan genocide - About 1 million.
Total deaths due to conflict since WWII - About 20 million.
Deaths due to traffic:
World wide in 2010 - 1.24 million.
Besides, who is telling you automobiles are safe?
Life is full of so many dangers, so it pays to be prepared. This book may be of some assistance http://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-Trimmer/dp/0870334336
(scroll down to read the comments)
Heater links to a fabulous paper at this link http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
There is way to much to summarize since it is basically a summary all by itself.
I really liked this:
"We need more research into existential risks detailed studies of particular aspects of specific risks as well as more general investigations of associated ethical, methodological, security and policy issues. Public awareness should also be built up so that constructive political debate about possible countermeasures becomes possible.
Now, its a commonplace that researchers always conclude that more research needs to be done in their field. But in this instance it is really true. There is more scholarly work on the life-habits of the dung fly than on existential risks."
This paper was written in 2002 I think we could identify more existential threats today. One point that Nick doesn't address is that combinations of lesser risks can potentially
contribute to in particular "risk pathways," through quasi-Markovian processes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain
If you have never heard of Markov chains, Markov created some very useful concepts. At the time Markov was writing, it was not understood that the same mathematics that describes random processes also treats information exchange processes. So, while the literature emphasis is on "random events." The math that we use to describe those events is almost exactly the same as for events ordered by information. This doesn't mean that Markov was wrong only that his concepts can be applied to processes, which can be shown not to be random.
Discussions of trends of any sort is rather annoying speculation. Dire warnings are rather morbid.
Nonetheless, pollution stinks, poisons, and debilitates. We don't need global warming to have good reasons to address pollution.
Conspiring to sustain a trend may just be good business for many established enterprises.
It is disheartening that Beijing tried so hard to provide a shining image of the city during the Olympics, and now it, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are all shouded in severe smog that even floats over to where I live to provide a few miserable days each year.
The automotive industry says automobiles are safe.
You only provide the death rate for 2010.
Can you clarify 'due to traffic'? Can we count deaths due to air pollution, drunk driving incidents, pedestrians killed, mechanical failure, brake failure, automotive air pollution, and such?
Still you do have a point. And yet..
"In its first century, the automobile has resulted in more deaths than the First World War. "
I suppose that is what I should have said and referenced this source.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/Modern_World/Car.html
@Heater
You may be right on this. But even without including the auto at such a high kill rate as an example, the point of my posting still holds.
Yes I only quoted 2010. You were supposed to fill in the rest.
We could assume 1.24 million traffic deaths per year since the beginning of the automobile. That would only be about 120 million. More realistically we could assume a linear growth since the start, that would only be a total of 60 million. Even more realistically there has probably been an exponential growth so only about 30 or 40 million deaths due to traffic, ever.
You can compare to the total deaths due to recent human conflict given and see that your original statement is not likely correct.
I'm sure those stats don't take into account anything that is not immediately traffic related, basically collisions between cars or cars and humans.
Not that I'm saying we should just accept traffic fatalities as a normal part of life, far from it.
I am a doctor. My general attitude about my own profession is far worse than yours. I don't think your characterization is fair but it is far more gentle than the profession deserves right now.
I would like to look at the logic about private versus public transportation. I would prefer to fly everywhere I go, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it on public airlines.
Every movie about pandemics includes air transportation as a causal link that promotes the deadliness of the doomsday bug. But even if we don't have a global pandemic,
all forms of public transport force you to breath the same air as everyone else, to sit on the same seats as everyone else and to touch the same hand rail as everyone else. The total impact on health of repeated exposures like this isn't really known but cannot be zero. Some of those impacts no doubt lead to deaths at some unknown point after the contacts days, weeks, decades. These effects don't show up in transportation safety statistics. So really what this article implies to me is that we should substitute unknown risks for known risks. When a future epidemic is shown to have been facilitated by public transportation of any kind the mortality and morbidity statistics of public transportation will have to be reconsidered. This kind of causality is probably the norm, likely to become a fixture in future debates. We have a new global epidemic almost every year. A very common mode of transmission is through public spaces: schools, churches, doctor's offices, and public transportation. We know that this is true we just don't know what it should mean to us, yet. Health effects that are independent of epidemic statistics are also likely to be very important, but the science in this area is not yet on a par with epidemiology. Reason can tell us that non-epidemic health effects are going to be an important element of the public debate about the structure of our societies, when it becomes possible to speak intelligently about it. It might be the elephant in the room.
I don't recall any plagues running around a decimating whole populations in my life time. The last such pandemic I'm aware of was in 1918, just at the beginning of the take up of all this germ ridden mass transportation. That killed 30 odd million people. More that the First World War.
http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
Then there is the fate of the natives of America wiped out by bugs they were not used to brought to them by the Europeans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas
Suggests to me you should not fear the hand rails on buses.
On the other hand of course, I do worry about antibiotic resistant bugs and those monsters they create in biological research labs that escape every now and then....
So that's a NAY on the whole car crushing, build a Pyramid thing, then?..
Only I don't want to see the last remaining few square miles of rain forest trashed and polluted in order to put in there.
No, put it on Wall St, say, kill two birds with one stone..well, pyramid.
Hmm... Something you posted a week or two ago gave me the impression you lived in OZ.
+10. There is nothing quite like gazing out to sea and pondering all the possibilities.
Medicine is pretty good in Taiwan. Doctors do indeed to a lot of good, work extremely hard, and hold themselves to higher standards than most of us.
What is so hard for doctors in the USA today is that they have been overrun by malpractise litigatation, big insurance dicating their practice, and marketing of equipment and medications. Pretty much the same influences that we feel are causing us to feel powerless to resolve global warming. I can recall when my dad's malpractise insurance tripled in on go and the premium went to about $300,000/year (it was a partnership). Having to earn $1000 per day before being able to show a profit is beyond me.
BTW, my dad was an M.D and so was my grandfather. Dad entered Stanford at the age of 16 in 1931 (or maybe '33). .. chief of staff for his hosipital, president of the local medical association, chairman of the state delegation to the AMA... for 5 years.
In a world where everyone should be a consumer, consumers make lousy patients just because their expectations are unrealistic -- nobody lives forever and good health is a partnership with the medical community. Doctors can't do much for those that abuse their own bodies.
The real question with medicine is the same as with global warming. Who is consistently throwing a roadblock in the way to doing the right thing for the good of all?
You got the message correctly. We need doctors, my dog needs a vet, we need good teachers, and we need good people in just about everything.
Good points all. I know many outstanding doctors. But in my opinion, the profession is a complete mess, here. And it seems to bring out the absolute worst in a small percentage of the doctors… and the profession seems incapable of doing anything about it. I have seen terrible things happen that I would never have believed possible, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes or experienced it as a patient I probably wouldn't believe it. Goes way beyond anything you could easily relate to.
Ordinarily, you would trust that as you went up the food chain in the medical world, you would get higher levels of
professionalism and ethics… that is the way it should be. That kind of order seems to have completely evaporated in many places.
In small towns with stable populations, people are somewhat protected by their personal knowledge of the doctors. If you asked the average Joe who the best doctors in town are… you would generally get the right answer.
By the way, I spent a summer at Stanford as part of my training. If I had never been there, I would have never guessed how beautiful it is in that area.
Rich
But at least what I am finding all seems to refer to that one very careful
What we see is that each event can be described as a period of heating followed by a period of cooling. What seems clear to me is that when we look at the 5 cycles that reach
peak levels the front side of the curves(the heating part of the cycle) is almost a straight line up and the backside (the cooling period) is anything but a straight line down.
The interval between evens is not constant in the earliest events the period between events is shorter and in the later record, the interval is longer.
The other interesting thing about this graph is that the peak temperatures aren't maintained. They appear as sharp spikes and then quickly disappear from the record. This suggests to me that something happens at peak temperatures to cause a cooling cycle to begin or that the initial cause of the heating somehow reverses itself (such as could happen with either a solar origin or an orbital cause). From the Naval Research Laboratory's statement, I wonder if a contraction of the thermosphere might be related to the reversals.
Don't forget the Taiping Rebellion. 20 million minus. I think they used hockey sticks on each other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
rjo__, you really need to find some alternative sources of information, or at least understand the ones you are using a bit better. The graph you included is often quoted by people trying to disprove climate change, since it stops at 1990 - i.e. about the time CO2 started to climb uncontrollably. But this is a misunderstanding of the key point of the graph, which is that it is evidence of a very strong correlation between CO2 and temperature that has existed for the past 425,000 years.
Since CO2 is now rising more rapidly than at any time during that entire period, your graph is actually providing evidence that we are also likely to see a concurrent temperature rise. Here is what CO2 lconcentrations look like over the same period, but also including the present day. Look at the right hand edge. So if you believe the evidence of your graph, you must also believe in climate change:
See here for more details on the above graph. If you want to see how it looks when temperature and C02 are combined, and the timeframe is extended to the present day, then someone has done that for you as well - here. And this is what it looks like:
Ross.
I know on the surface that it may seem global warming and the USA medical situation may not be related... but please consider the possibility.
The expansion of complexity in regulation and oversight has ussurped public participation in determining who is accountable for what.
Medicine is supposedly an ethical culture which is in control of its knowledge and actions by peer review. The average person turns to them in times of need with trust in their skills, opinion, and desire to do the right thing.
Enter law makers, insurance industries, and huge rewards for thoses that create products that people must use on a daily basis to cope with daily living.
The current results, doctors have lost control over their income via huge insurance overheads and via insurance companies telling them what they can have rather than allowing them to charge what the need. Suppliers dazzle them with new innovations that may not be all that good, but have a patent to reap profits. And of course, the fact that law makers are dependent upon political contributions provides the means for gridlock on any balancing of the power by limiting the liability of doctors to reasonable malpractice compensation.
I see that Japan has just sold two very high-tech super-heated steam coal fired electrical plants to Indonesia. Coal fired? Well they claim that their technology will reduce CO2 emissions over what exists now... maybe true. But natural gas would likely do even better.
The average voter just learns of these things when they are done deals. But they first become a matter of policy, enter an agenda of possiblities, get short listed... long before they happen. That is all behind the scenes.
What we don't see is reports of what consistently gets bumped to lower priorites because something seemingly new and wonderful jumps the queue. That is commonly called 'pork barrel' legislation, but is done in more ways than mere legislation.
+++++++++++
What we really need is far more transparency about agenda, policy, and short listing.
Then the public can participate in what gets what priority. Or sees that only worthy items are expedited. And I doubt that is going to be gotten easily.
It is a huge undertaking and the powers that be rely on most of the public preferring to follow the NBA or Soccer or the shopping channel.
The correlation between CO2 increases and temperature seems irrefutable. I don't see how anyone could possibly dispute it…. It isn't just now… but as far back as the ice record takes us.
Current data is no doubt a lot more accurate than data that is inferred from ice records. The only point I was trying to make is that global heating and cooling cycles have existed as far back as we can look.
Loopy,
I don't think it has much to do with global heating, but I couldn't agree more. This has happened largely because of the behavior of organized medicine. Most of the changes that we have seen are the direct result of either lobbying by organized medicine or with the tacit approval of organized medicine. Somewhere along the way, our organized brethren came to the conclusion that doctors were making too much money and had too much autonomy… the cure turns out to be worse than the disease they were trying to treat.
I was very interested in medical research… but I wasn't crazy about hanging by a thread and constantly re-applying for the right to continue my own research. My solution was to fund my own research. I led a very productive private research life… none of it was worth very much in monetary terms, but it was interesting and led to me having a better understanding of fundamental issues. That strategy simply isn't possible today. My choice is not an option today. It no longer exists.
When you make a doctor into an employee of the "insurance company" (as we have now done in many places), he might still be a good doctor, but his capacity to make the most important choices about his life or yours has been crippled. The insurance company does that now. I don't think the average person understands what little power a doctor has to direct care. Medicine is being managed as though it is a defined set of services or a commodity… by people that really don't understand medicine at all. At the same time all of these major changes were occurring, medical theory continued to change. You can't really regulate medicine… but you can stop it in its track by saying "this is what a disease is… and this is how you should treat it." That is what has happened here. American medicine might as well have been put into a time capsule and sealed up for posterity.
Rich
Yes, indeed. All you need to do now is take the next logical step, which is to acknowledge that pushing a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in volumes not seen for the last 425,000 years is probably a pretty dumb thing to do.
Ross.