LW poster Tim Tyler wrote an interesting contrarian article on his website about global warming. I’m not really endorsing the main argument, but it had a lot of information I was unfamiliar with before reading.
I had a fairly long running argument with him about this some years back, suffice to say that none of the information he presents is little known among climate scientists, and they don’t share his optimism. The “danger” of reglaciation is completely overblown (we’ve most likely already broken the ice age cycle, having boosted atmospheric CO2 back up to Pleistocene levels,) and even if we did enter a new glaciation period, it would be such a slow process as to pose relatively little danger to our society.
He’s operating under a largely naive “warmer is better” model which fails to account for the difficulty ecological systems have in adapting to rapid changes.
suffice to say that none of the information he presents is little known among climate scientists
I was never under the impression that climate scientists didn’t know these things. However I’d been reading editorials and popular science articles about climate change for years before I read Tyler’s post and still didn’t know a lot of the really basic facts Tyler presented. For example, I did not understand the distinction between interglacials and ice ages, or the fact that Earth has usually had zero polar ice throughout its history.
From the pop science articles and editorials I’d been reading, I was really badly informed about the topic—and these are the ways almost everyone learns about climate change issues. Since then I’ve talked to a many people about this, and most people have known very few of these facts.
He’s operating under a largely naive “warmer is better” model which fails to account for the difficulty ecological systems have in adapting to rapid changes.
If you believe rapid changes are bad, that actually is evidence that warmer is better, because warm earth eras are dramatically more stable. Ice ages have dramatic positive feedback cycles, where cooling triggers further cooling and warming triggers further warming. Because of this, there have been repeated “snowball earth” events in which life was driven to near extinction. Regardless of what humans do, these cycles will continue until the ice age ends.
The “danger” of reglaciation is completely overblown (we’ve most likely already broken the ice age cycle, having boosted atmospheric CO2 back up to Pleistocene levels,) and even if we did enter a new glaciation period, it would be such a slow process as to pose relatively little danger to our society.
I agree with you here. Climate change takes centuries or millennia to produce dramatic changes. That just doesn’t seem terribly important in light of exponential economic and technological change that produces dramatic effects orders of magnitude faster.
f you believe rapid changes are bad, that actually is evidence that warmer is better, because warm earth eras are dramatically more stable. Ice ages have dramatic positive feedback cycles, where cooling triggers further cooling and warming triggers further warming.
The warming event we’re triggering is itself a much more rapid change than the warming and cooling events which occur during an ice age. Going back to Pleistocene level stability might have advantages in the long run, but a rapid shift to Pleistocene level climate is itself going to be harmful.
I agree with you here. Climate change takes centuries or millennia to produce dramatic changes. That just doesn’t seem terribly important in light of exponential economic and technological change that produces dramatic effects orders of magnitude faster.
The largest effects aren’t going to show up for centuries or more, but at the present rate, we’re looking at quite a large ecological impact within this century.
I certainly wouldn’t call climate change the top risk to humanity, or even close to it, but a mass extinction event is going to be a significant quality-of-life issue, even if we’re not one of the species lost.
The “danger” of reglaciation is completely overblown (we’ve most likely already broken the ice age cycle, having boosted atmospheric CO2 back up to Pleistocene levels,)
Go, anthropocentric warming! Fingers crossed on that one, though—at least until there’s a consensus on what causes the glacial cycles and their periodic shifts.
and even if we did enter a new glaciation period, it would be such a slow process as to pose relatively little danger to our society.
All climate change is slow—and not-very threatening to civilization.
The “danger” of reglaciation is completely overblown (we’ve most likely already broken the ice age cycle, having boosted atmospheric CO2 back up to Pleistocene levels,)
Go, anthropocentric warming! Fingers crossed on that one, though—at least until there’s a consensus on what causes the glacial cycles and their periodic shifts.
and even if we did enter a new glaciation period, it would be such a slow process as to pose relatively little danger to our society.
All climate change is slow—and not-very threatening to civilization.
The “danger” of reglaciation is completely overblown (we’ve most likely already broken the ice age cycle, having boosted atmospheric CO2 back up to Pleistocene levels,)
Go, anthropocentric warming! Fingers crossed on that one, though—at least until there’s a consensus on what causes the glacial cycles and their periodic shifts.
and even if we did enter a new glaciation period, it would be such a slow process as to pose relatively little danger to our society.
All climate change is slow—and not-very threatening to civilization.
none of the information he presents is little known among climate scientists, and they don’t share his optimism.
Follow the money. They are funded when they project doom. Thus the IPCC fiasco.
He’s operating under a largely naive “warmer is better” model which fails to account for the difficulty ecological systems have in adapting to rapid changes.
Warmer is better—when you’re in an ice age. I acknowledge rapid change will cause some problems. However, these are overblown by the media, while the large benefits go largely ignored. It seems like pure doom-bias to me. Eco-apocalypse sells, while “actually, thiings might get better in most places” does not.
Even if people think there is enormous value in living long and happy lives, it is still coherent to acknowledge that there might be existences that are not worth living. The facts seem to point towards this being the case for the vast majority of wild animals. I’m just pointing out the obvious conclusion.
If your utility function includes stuff you want to minimize, then you cannot a priori rule out that freezing the world may be the best outcome, as this would depend on empirical circumstances. It seems weird to me why anyone would reject a value judgement based on a conclusion that is a possibility for all value systems (or at least the ones that contain minimization); this would be getting it backwards, I think.
Also note that my initial comment was about reglaciation, which doesn’t necessarily imply the extinction of all life on earth. All else being equal, wouldn’t it be better to reduce the amount of wild animals, if it is empirically the case that the vast majority of wild animals die shortly after birth in ways that are presumably painful? If your answer is “That looks like deathophilia”, then I’m somewhat lost to be honest.
Finally, depending one one’s view, there is a relevant difference between death an non-existence. One could think that one poses a problem whereas the other doesn’t.
Even if you think animal suffering is bad enough that it would be a good idea to kill them all, reglaciation is just a bizarre way of achieving this. First of all it doesn’t actually kill off all animals. Also it would be an amazingly slow and destructive and expensive and… stupid way of killing things.
I wasn’t commenting on practical strategies about reducing the number of wild animals. All I was saying is that there are positive consequences of reglaciation and that they might outweigh the negative consequences. Of course, there are probably ways to bring about the positive consequences faster and more effectively while still preventing the negative ones.
(Don’t interpret too much into my account name here, I didn’t even realize how fitting it was to this discussion until you pointed it out.)
I notice that the great Matt Ridley puts out a stream of broadly-similar material on his blog these days.
For example, his latest post is subtitled: “Global warming will probably be a net benefit for several decades”.
I write little about climate—simply because it is a relatively insignificant issue. It’s main significance seems to be due to all the time which is wasted on it—time which could be being put to much better use.
LW poster Tim Tyler wrote an interesting contrarian article on his website about global warming. I’m not really endorsing the main argument, but it had a lot of information I was unfamiliar with before reading.
I had a fairly long running argument with him about this some years back, suffice to say that none of the information he presents is little known among climate scientists, and they don’t share his optimism. The “danger” of reglaciation is completely overblown (we’ve most likely already broken the ice age cycle, having boosted atmospheric CO2 back up to Pleistocene levels,) and even if we did enter a new glaciation period, it would be such a slow process as to pose relatively little danger to our society.
He’s operating under a largely naive “warmer is better” model which fails to account for the difficulty ecological systems have in adapting to rapid changes.
I was never under the impression that climate scientists didn’t know these things. However I’d been reading editorials and popular science articles about climate change for years before I read Tyler’s post and still didn’t know a lot of the really basic facts Tyler presented. For example, I did not understand the distinction between interglacials and ice ages, or the fact that Earth has usually had zero polar ice throughout its history.
From the pop science articles and editorials I’d been reading, I was really badly informed about the topic—and these are the ways almost everyone learns about climate change issues. Since then I’ve talked to a many people about this, and most people have known very few of these facts.
If you believe rapid changes are bad, that actually is evidence that warmer is better, because warm earth eras are dramatically more stable. Ice ages have dramatic positive feedback cycles, where cooling triggers further cooling and warming triggers further warming. Because of this, there have been repeated “snowball earth” events in which life was driven to near extinction. Regardless of what humans do, these cycles will continue until the ice age ends.
I agree with you here. Climate change takes centuries or millennia to produce dramatic changes. That just doesn’t seem terribly important in light of exponential economic and technological change that produces dramatic effects orders of magnitude faster.
The warming event we’re triggering is itself a much more rapid change than the warming and cooling events which occur during an ice age. Going back to Pleistocene level stability might have advantages in the long run, but a rapid shift to Pleistocene level climate is itself going to be harmful.
The largest effects aren’t going to show up for centuries or more, but at the present rate, we’re looking at quite a large ecological impact within this century.
I certainly wouldn’t call climate change the top risk to humanity, or even close to it, but a mass extinction event is going to be a significant quality-of-life issue, even if we’re not one of the species lost.
Go, anthropocentric warming! Fingers crossed on that one, though—at least until there’s a consensus on what causes the glacial cycles and their periodic shifts.
All climate change is slow—and not-very threatening to civilization.
Go, anthropocentric warming! Fingers crossed on that one, though—at least until there’s a consensus on what causes the glacial cycles and their periodic shifts.
All climate change is slow—and not-very threatening to civilization.
Go, anthropocentric warming! Fingers crossed on that one, though—at least until there’s a consensus on what causes the glacial cycles and their periodic shifts.
All climate change is slow—and not-very threatening to civilization.
Follow the money. They are funded when they project doom. Thus the IPCC fiasco.
Warmer is better—when you’re in an ice age. I acknowledge rapid change will cause some problems. However, these are overblown by the media, while the large benefits go largely ignored. It seems like pure doom-bias to me. Eco-apocalypse sells, while “actually, thiings might get better in most places” does not.
And here a reason why reglaciation might be a good thing.
That looks like deathophilia :-(
Even if people think there is enormous value in living long and happy lives, it is still coherent to acknowledge that there might be existences that are not worth living. The facts seem to point towards this being the case for the vast majority of wild animals. I’m just pointing out the obvious conclusion.
Appropriate, since ice-nine is a chemical in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle which causes all water to freeze, exterminating all life on earth.
If your utility function includes stuff you want to minimize, then you cannot a priori rule out that freezing the world may be the best outcome, as this would depend on empirical circumstances. It seems weird to me why anyone would reject a value judgement based on a conclusion that is a possibility for all value systems (or at least the ones that contain minimization); this would be getting it backwards, I think.
Also note that my initial comment was about reglaciation, which doesn’t necessarily imply the extinction of all life on earth. All else being equal, wouldn’t it be better to reduce the amount of wild animals, if it is empirically the case that the vast majority of wild animals die shortly after birth in ways that are presumably painful? If your answer is “That looks like deathophilia”, then I’m somewhat lost to be honest.
Finally, depending one one’s view, there is a relevant difference between death an non-existence. One could think that one poses a problem whereas the other doesn’t.
Even if you think animal suffering is bad enough that it would be a good idea to kill them all, reglaciation is just a bizarre way of achieving this. First of all it doesn’t actually kill off all animals. Also it would be an amazingly slow and destructive and expensive and… stupid way of killing things.
I wasn’t commenting on practical strategies about reducing the number of wild animals. All I was saying is that there are positive consequences of reglaciation and that they might outweigh the negative consequences. Of course, there are probably ways to bring about the positive consequences faster and more effectively while still preventing the negative ones. (Don’t interpret too much into my account name here, I didn’t even realize how fitting it was to this discussion until you pointed it out.)
Reglaciation precludes many other possibilities, so the opportunity costs must be considered as well.
I notice that the great Matt Ridley puts out a stream of broadly-similar material on his blog these days.
For example, his latest post is subtitled: “Global warming will probably be a net benefit for several decades”.
I write little about climate—simply because it is a relatively insignificant issue. It’s main significance seems to be due to all the time which is wasted on it—time which could be being put to much better use.