I agree that we should think before acting. In fact, 30+ years and billions have been spent on thinking so far; do you really think that it`s all for naught, merely because recent temperatures have not marched in a straight line upwards?

Do you recognize the enormous inertia in the system (as well as its chaotic aspects), that we only have our foot on the accelerator with CO2 forcing, soot and albedo feedbacks, that power from coal remains tremendously dirty and costly to health, property and common resources, that there is essentially no meaningful system in place to allow people to express their different preferences regarding our shared global climate system, and that getting to such a system in the face of multiple economic actors and states is a time-consuming process?

If so, why in the face of these facts do you apparently consider that doing nothing on an institutional basis as we ticker on an uncontrolled basis with climate systems to be a "conservative" course of action?

Perhaps you will consider doing some more thinking about the results of research so far, and about the weight that other economic actors (those other "them" who think that the state of knowledge is sufficient to justify personal and policy action) are giving to it.

I`ve pulled together a few items on science and the reactions of others for your consideration:

Jim Hansen: As CO2 climbs, what are the long-term warming effects of CURRENT CO2 levels?

Climate models and climate "sensitivity" for dummies (me too); a recent bibliography

Marlo Lewis/CEI laughs at the ice sheets and Gore; Lloyd's and other insurers do not. Hmmm.

Why top demagogues (Jim Hansen, Florida Power, RAND, Exxon, AEI, Margo Thoring, major economists, George Will) prefer rebated carbon taxes

Finally, allow me to note that you have yet to respond to my comments on your comments on Nordhaus:
Bob Murphy heroically nitpicks the CBA model of reluctant carbon tax advocate, William Nordhaus
 

They aren't dumb, they just don't know how good past models and measurement equipment was.

People like Al Gore can point to some pretty chart and not realize how difficult it is to measure mean global temperatures accurately.
 

Look,
it doesn't matter whether or not it is humans that are bringing about the current change in climate. The earth's climate has always been in flux, and changed radically countless times. The good thing about climate change is that once it has tipped, the system settles into a pretty stable state for a long time.
So, since climate change is unavoidable, let's not worry about how to stop it, but simply hope that when it happens, we have arranged ourselves politically and economically to deal with it.
In a way, having the climate change radically now may be a good thing. The planet is relatively empty, still, and so the relative number of people to suffer from it is probably smaller than it would be if the climate changed radically in, say, two hundred years.
Don't fight climate change - prepare for it.
Everything else is foolishness.
 

tokyotom: name a disaster scenario, something that you and your fellow global warming scaremongers think is going to happen over the next ten years. i'm not talking about the average temp being 1 degree warmer in that timeframe. i mean, name the resulting disasterous consequence of such a warming. name it, and i'll wager any amount you want that it will not happen.

you talk about "facts." well, facts are not disputed by any reasonable scientists. facts are facts. nobody seriously disputes the weight of 1 liter of water. nobody seriously disputes the distance around the earth, or the distance to the moon. the answers to those quesitons are all facts.

global warming is not a fact. even the simple temperature readings over the past 100 years are disputed. never mind the predictions of dire consequences, which are just pure guesses. and guesses are not facts.

if you want to change your lifestyle based on the guesses of a group of wacky scaremongers go right ahead. but don't expect the whole world to fall in line based purely on disputed science and unsubstantiated predictions.
 

Russell, who`s a "scaremonger", anyone who disagrees with you?

If all of the worlds` academies of science, RAND, McKinsey, Florida Power, Exxon, AEI, the American Institute for Capital Formation and Lloyd`s insurance, and every firm that has been profiting by reducing CO2 emissions, capturing methane and entering into voluntary carbon trades are all scaremongers, then I guess I`m in good company.

BTW, do you have any idea how the institution of private property evolved? Hint: it has something to do with mankind`s learning with respect to how to avoid tragedies of the commons. (Relevance? Is the atmosphere a commons?)

Yes, facts are facts, except to ostriches.
 

Private property emerged as the result of one group of people occupying a particularly useful piece of territory before others, and not agreeing to sharing it with non-relatives - unless amply compensated with stuff they couldn't make themselves.

Tragedy of the Commons is the result of private property being prohibited.

Sequence of events matters.

There never was a Commons until very recently in human history. Stoneage hunter-gatherers already very much believed in protecting their hunting/foraging grounds - by force of arms if necessary.

Read up on the history of war before spouting Hobbesian post-hoc just-so story telling.
 

Read up on the history of war before spouting Hobbesian post-hoc just-so story telling.

James, I'm not sure what I did to deserve this type of offensiveness. If you are making a point, it's not clear what - other than to arrogate some intellectual superority by imputing some idiocy to me.

I don't mind conceding from the outset that you must be smarter, but beside that can you try a little harder to explain what you mean? Surely it can't be that the atmosphere has until recently been effectively owned, either privately or by groups, with tragedy of the commons aspects arising only as a result of a recent prohibition of private property in the air.

The "tragedy of the commons" paradigm is somewhat sloppily defined, but the phenonmenon it describes applies to unowned, open-access resources, to commonly-owned (community property) resources, and to "publicly" owned but politically/bureacratically managed resources.

The evolution of private property that you describe involves the partial transition from unowned to commonly-owned resources (that were defended from outsiders and with internal rules about usage); many such well-managed common resource systems remain, but true "private" property came later, when technology and market demands made ownership by individuals more advantageous. See the English enclosure movement, which destroyed common law community property rights in favor of private property. See also this discussion by Ludwig von Mises and this by
Bruce Yandle: "The Commons: Tragedy or Triumph?"

I appreciate your help in assisting my slow understanding of whatever your point is.
 

James, BTW, when I said "Yes, facts are facts, except to ostriches" I had not noticed your ostrich photo clip, and certainly did not intend an attack on you. I like ostriches.
 

Tokyo Tom,

my apologies for the angry tone. It was uncalled for.

Ok, there are some 'commons' - namely those that cannot be feasibly owned by anybody. The atmosphere is one of them, culture is another.
Changes to either have unimaginable impact on people who did not ask to be impacted.
The invention of script totally changed the world - too bad for those whose lives were changed for the worse by it.
Other technologies have similar effect. Some of these changes can be very, very inconvenient.
Does polluting culture with new ideas require the government to impose a new ideas tax? Maybe a cap-and-trade: no more than one culture changing idea per year, without compensation for others.
Musicians did not ask for the printing press, but boy did it make their ability to charge for performances ineffective. Some people probably starved to death because of it.
Some things cannot be owned. Some inconveniences - even damages - cannot be avoided or properly mitigated. That's life.
Global climate change is unavoidable. Whether it is brought about this time by humans does not change that.


Regarding the Tragedy of the Commons story - the question is: why did nobody own it privately? Why was there no management system in place?

The interesting thing is that there really are not many examples of Commons around the world. Almost all economically useful territories were owned and claimed by people. People even have claimed the seas - and still do.

Who says, by the way, that global climate change will be a bad thing in the long run? if it turns out that some people - maybe quite a few - come out winners - should they then post-hoc compensate those currently punished through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes?

What if it turns out that we slowed down global warming unnecessarily and that the world would have been better off if it had come earlier?

Who will compensate then whom?

Basically, my argument is this: things that cannot be privately owned, and that cannot be managed through a regime of private contract should not be managed in any way. They simply are 'one of those things that happn'.

Oh, what about light pollution? Really sucks for animals and many humans. Should people who prefer darkness be compensated by those who prefer light?

Just wondering.

Oh, regarding the Ostriches: regardless of what legend says, these are very, very vigilante birds and are generally the first to notice danger. Read it up.

And last but not least: they can be very, very vicious when they feel threatened. :)
 

TT:

i noticed that you didn't bother naming the (or a) disaster scenario that will hit us in the next ten years as a result of climate change.

many of those profitting from the global warming discussion are indeed scaremongers. the more their theories take hold, the more money that ends up in their pockets. a certain nobel prize winner comes immediately to mind.

so, does that mean you don't want to bet on it?
 

Bob, I thought that you might appreciate this post on the difficulties of measuring temperatures, in this case the ocean's.
 

Russell, if you stop littering your comments with baseless ad homs like "scaremonger", maybe I'll be more inclined to address you. For now, I pass.
 

James, apology accepted.

There are indeed difficulties in managing commons, but technology and human demands are not static, and there are countless ongoing battles to limit tragedies of the commons, from dealing with pirates (who treat inadequately defended property as a commons), to online music piracy, to copyright/patent and various internet issues, to water supplies, to the oceans (see this post on crashing tuna stocks) and the atmosphere.

Sorry, but your suggestion that existing commons or open-access resources cannot be better managed and that we should throw up our hands and treat the destructive exploitation of such resources as simply "one of those things that happen" flies in the face of economic history and human inventiveness and abilities to cooperate. There are always incentives to end tragedies of the commons, but solving them is not always easy.

Elinor Ostrom is the guru on commons issues; you might enjoying reading some of her stuff.

On climate change, you might consider this post by libertarian Ron Bailey of Reason.

Who says, by the way, that global climate change will be a bad thing in the long run? if it turns out that some people - maybe quite a few - come out winners - should they then post-hoc compensate those currently punished through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes?

Good question; have you ever considered turning it around? Should those who benefit from climate change have to compensate those who lose from it? What do Lockean principles have to say about this? Do you suppose that those benefitting most directly from the amtospheric free-for-all have any incentives to delay any change in management regimes?
 

ok TT, i'll play nicer. what do you climate change believers prefer to be called?

i find it interesting that you want the world's taxpayers, collectively, to make a wager that you, individually, are not willing to make.
 

Russell, care to respond to anything I've actually said, or linked to? Beside that being a usual form of conversation, you might find that I've already offered evidence of changes, risks and people who are changing their behavior IOW, betting) in the face of them.
 

TT:

i have indeed read many of your links.

i'll hang my hat on this quote:

"Meaningful predictions of the likelihood of rapid, catastrophic ice discharge, ice sheet collapse or lake outbursts in the near future are impossible."

or, my abbreviated version:

"Meaningful predictions...are impossible."

say...i wonder if lloyd's will be able to increase premiums if the global warming pot is sufficiently stirred?


btw, i know there are many making bets on climate chnge, for a variety of reasons, including that it's financially lucrative for them. but they're not posting here on Free Advice. my suggestion of a wager was with you, since you are here, and you're a fairly vocal supporter of what are likely expensive actions.
 

Russell, thanks for playing a little nicer.

First, scaremongering (and anti-scaremongering) - which I consider to consist of someone trying to take advantage of our penchant for fear - works only when there is at least a credible basis for it. Second, while there are scaremongers, I don't consider that I'm one (all I have done here and elsewhere is that there are legiimate reasons to be concerned). Third, as I suggested, there is loads of support for established firms, scientists and whatnot for the view that we should be concerned about our possible influences on climate - and it makes no sense to say that all of these people are scaremongering, in on some kind of massive conspiracy or have lost theire senses and fallen prey to some type of cult.

global warming is not a fact. even the simple temperature readings over the past 100 years are disputed. never mind the predictions of dire consequences, which are just pure guesses. and guesses are not facts.

Don't kid yourself; there are lots of facts associated with climate science. No one denies that GHGs, releases of soots and changes in ground cover exert warming effects, that CO2 emissions and accumulations continue to climb, and that ocean pH is showing directly correlated changes. Glaciers and ice caps continue to melt, and growing seasons, water cycles, the tropic zone etc. to shift. The fact that the climate system is enormously complicated and we can't predicted it with much accuracy doesn't leave us with no cause for concern for what we can see coming down the pike - not only in more GHG emissions, but in just plain old (and massive) pollution caused by the combustion of coal.

As there are no property rights in the atmosphere, what we do with those concerns is a political question at home and one for negotiation with others we share the planet with abroad. I don't think there are any easy answers.

But as for bets, as I referred there are many underway; far more important than the direct bet-making you refer to is all of the climate-change-related economic activity underway, fuelled by ongoing change and people's perceptions of risks and opportunities. Personlly, I don't expect anything particularly disastrous to happen in the next 10 years that can be attributed solely to our pressure on climate, but I expect the trends of a drier West, earlier run-off and longer wildfire seasons (and more water problems) to continue (I blogged on that, BTW), mountain glaciers around the world to continue to melt, pine bark beetles to continue to spread (due to lack of winter die-off), the Arctic to continue to thaw, and ocean temperatures, sea levels and pH levels to continue to rise.

BTW, I don't "post" here at Bob's blog, but simply by commenting try to nudge him towards a more sophisticated understanding of the world.