Clobal warming related catastrophes are increasingly hitting vulnerable populations around the world!

[brenthutch 444]

This is what I have been warning everyone about.

“Global-warming-related catastrophes are increasingly hitting vulnerable populations around the world… In Canada, in the U.K., in Spain, in Denmark, in Germany and elsewhere the danger ... is especially great… The result is chaos to the economic well-being of the EU nations. Even in rock-solid Germany, up to 15% of the populace is now believed to be in “fuel poverty” — defined by governments as needing to spend more than 10% of the total household income on electricity and gas. Some 600,000 low-income Germans are now being cut off by their power companies annually, a number expected to increase…. some 12 million people are already in fuel poverty, 900,000 of them in wind-infested Scotland alone, and the U.K. has now entered a double-dip recession.”

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/05/11/lawrence-solomon-green-power-failure/

[JohnRich 4]

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up to 15% of the populace is now believed to be in “fuel poverty” — defined by governments as needing to spend more than 10% of the total household income on electricity and gas.

They may have to spend more on air conditioning in summer, but they'll also pay less for heating in the winter. So over the course of the year, it'll average out.

During the ice age, cave men and mammals migrated south to warmer climates. Maybe it's time for everyone to start moving back north again to cooler climes. Look out Canada!

[davjohns 1]

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This is what I have been warning everyone about.

“Global-warming-related catastrophes are increasingly hitting vulnerable populations around the world… In Canada, in the U.K., in Spain, in Denmark, in Germany and elsewhere the danger ... is especially great… The result is chaos to the economic well-being of the EU nations. Even in rock-solid Germany, up to 15% of the populace is now believed to be in “fuel poverty” — defined by governments as needing to spend more than 10% of the total household income on electricity and gas. Some 600,000 low-income Germans are now being cut off by their power companies annually, a number expected to increase…. some 12 million people are already in fuel poverty, 900,000 of them in wind-infested Scotland alone, and the U.K. has now entered a double-dip recession.”

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/05/11/lawrence-solomon-green-power-failure/

That's awful! How do they know which areas to target?

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[StreetScooby 5]

What is Clobal warming?
Is Al Gore involved?

We are all engines of karma

[brenthutch 444]

I think you missed the gist of the post. The increases in energy costs have nothing to do with actual global warming; they have entirely to do with the response to it.

[headoverheels 334]

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What is Clobal warming?
Is Al Gore involved?

Thawing out Hitler's nose.

[billvon 3,120]

>They may have to spend more on air conditioning in summer, but they'll
>also pay less for heating in the winter. So over the course of the year, it'll
>average out.

True, for many people in temperate climates. In hotter climates it will be mostly negative; in cooler, they may actually pay less.

(And welcome to the ranks of the Type III deniers; that's progress!)

[brenthutch 444]

I think if everyone read the attached post they would realize that the title is entirely tongue in cheek. The energy poor are victims of the climate change movement. It has nothing to do with running or not running an air conditioner.

[lawrocket 3]

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(And welcome to the ranks of the Type III deniers; that's progress!)

Isn't that really where so much of the debate is? We've been told of any and all form of cataclysm that "may" result from climate change. (I never see predictions that are not qualified. Always made to sound really scary, i.e., "May result in a 7 meter change in sea level by 2100.")

Am I a level III denier? My longstanding thought is that global warming is real, that human activity plays a part in it, but that the long-term effects will be negligible and that there will be costs and benefits as a result.

I mean, considering that in hindsight over the last 100 years the observation holds up pretty robustly, doesn't is bode fairly decently for the future? (Even Arctic Sea Ice extent is grossly normal right now)

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[billvon 3,120]

>Isn't that really where so much of the debate is?

I think it's where a lot of the debate is, yes. However there are still a lot of Type I's ("it's not warming") and Type II's ("OK it's warming but we had nothing to do with it.") And some who switch depending on which story they read that day.

>We've been told of any and all form of cataclysm that "may" result from
>climate change.

Yep, there are a lot of alarmists out there as well. There are both alarmists and deniers who are expert at playing the media.

>Am I a level III denier? My longstanding thought is that global warming is
>real, that human activity plays a part in it, but that the long-term effects
>will be negligible and that there will be costs and benefits as a result.

I'd say no - a Type III is certain that it will all be good. In reality there will almost certainly be "good" and "bad" things to come of any climactic change. (in quotes since an eskimo might disagree with a mall developer or farmer as to what "good" means.)

Which means the question devolves to - are the potential bad (in this case expensive, dangerous or deadly) things that climate change might bring greater than the expense involved in trying to mitigate that change? In some cases yes, in some cases no - which is where most of the political argument rages.

[lawrocket 3]

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Which means the question devolves to - are the potential bad (in this case expensive, dangerous or deadly) things that climate change might bring greater than the expense involved in trying to mitigate that change? In some cases yes, in some cases no - which is where most of the political argument rages.

Absolutely. I think this is what is lost in it. Science has become the proxy for policy. "We must spend whatever is necessary to prevent a rise in sea level. We are at a tipping point." To disagree with such a statement is to be considered by many to be "anti-science."

When it is no more anti-science to disagree that it is pro-science to agree. (I myself do not find climate models to be conclusive "science" because climate models are predictions, which will be validated or invalidated in the distant future).

This is where propoganda is so dangerous for both sides. Both have lost significant amounts of credibility. And it's not like some middle ground is being reached - I just think people are tiring of it.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kelpdiver 2]

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up to 15% of the populace is now believed to be in “fuel poverty” — defined by governments as needing to spend more than 10% of the total household income on electricity and gas.

They may have to spend more on air conditioning in summer, but they'll also pay less for heating in the winter. So over the course of the year, it'll average out.

his post is really focused on the price of gasoline. Although I thought the Germans, along with most of the EU, had long been suffering from the rather highly taxed gas prices, making the recent increases feel much less significant than for those long distance commuters in the US.

[billvon 3,120]

>"We must spend whatever is necessary to prevent a rise in sea level.
>We are at a tipping point."

I agree that that first sentence is somewhat silly, since we could live with a sea level rise. Might be expensive but we could certainly live with it - and it might be less expensive than reducing CO2 emissions.

However the second sentence has two meanings, a political one and a physical one. The political one is pretty meaningless; a statement that "now is the most important time ever!" Yeah, seems like it's always the most important time.

The physical one generally refers to a positive feedback cycle, and that's not something that we want to see happen, based purely on the "slow changes are better than fast ones" generalization. Thus the odds of such self-sustaining positive feedback occurring has to be factored into any risk equation. Unfortunately you don't really know that you are at the 'tipping point' until the feedback goes past unity.

>I myself do not find climate models to be conclusive "science" because
>climate models are predictions, which will be validated or invalidated in the
>distant future.

Do you think the statements "smoking increases your risk of lung cancer" or "exercise and diet can help fat people reduce their weight" are based in science?

>And it's not like some middle ground is being reached - I just think people
>are tiring of it.

That, I think, has the same effect.

[lawrocket 3]

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Unfortunately you don't really know that you are at the 'tipping point' until the feedback goes past unity.

I agree. That's my problem. We've heard for years (decades?) about "we are at a tipping point" or "approaching a tipping point." Politicians have reason to state it. Scientists? It's dubious.

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Do you think the statements "smoking increases your risk of lung cancer" or "exercise and diet can help fat people reduce their weight" are based in science?

Yes. And we have plenty of scientific and statistical validation of those risks to make it a proveable thing. It's not saying, "YOU WILL GET CANCER AND DIE." It's saying that "out of 100 people, more smokers will get cancer than non-smokers."

Compare it with climate. In the 1800's there wasn't evidence that people would die an early death from smoking. Part of it was that early death was a pretty common thing - sixty was a ripe old age. But then people started figuring out things about cancer and realizing that there was a correlation between smoking and cancer. They were able to establish causation, too. Looking forward uses the same information and proof as looking forward from 1960.

It's why the climate predictions may be right. They may be wrong. We dont' know, because we have no results from GCMs going out 100 years.

I'll examine your choice of statement: "based in science." Yes. Disney's "Pocahontas" was "based on a true story." It doesn't mean it's a true story. "Star Trek" is based on science. It also doesn't mean that there's really a Heisenberg Compensator to prevent quantum mechanics from misassembling Kirk when beamed. Scientifically, quantum mechanics provides a problem. Based on science. But not science, now is it?

GCM's are predictions. Predictions are not science until they are validated.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[billvon 3,120]

>It's saying that "out of 100 people, more smokers will get cancer than
>non-smokers."

Right! And if time proves out that that's correct, then the odds that it will be true in the future goes up. Likewise, as time goes on and IPCC predictions are validated, the odds of that they will be valid in the future also rises.

>GCM's are predictions. Predictions are not science until they are validated.

I'd say the very process of making them and then validating them - that's the core of what science does. It's why we can predict weather, or cancer risk, or tsunamis, or whether an airplane will fly or fall out of the sky. I don't think anyone would claim "well, astrophysics isn't science until we actually find a black hole or watch a star form."

[brenthutch 444]

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>"We must spend whatever is necessary to prevent a rise in sea level.
>We are at a tipping point."

I agree that that first sentence is somewhat silly, since we could live with a sea level rise. Might be expensive but we could certainly live with it - and it might be less expensive than reducing CO2 emissions.

Listen to yourself, in one sentence you use: could, might, could, and might again. In realville, we say things such as,
"Denmark, an early adopter of the global-warming mania, now requires its households to pay the developed world’s highest power prices — about 40¢ a kilowatt hour" Notice, I did not say might, could, should, or if. It must be nice to live in the land of unicorns and fairies.

• Quote

[kelpdiver 2]

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"Denmark, an early adopter of the global-warming mania, now requires its households to pay the developed world’s highest power prices — about 40¢ a kilowatt hour" Notice, I did not say might, could, should, or if. It must be nice to live in the land of unicorns and fairies.

I bet they avoid devices that burn 20W when they're in standby. Their usage has got to be less than our typical vampire drain from badly devised electronics.

[JohnRich 4]

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(And welcome to the ranks of the Type III deniers; that's progress!)

It's too bad you didn't recognize the humor I intended in that post.

[billvon 3,120]

>Listen to yourself, in one sentence you use: could, might, could, and might again. In realville . . .

You mean "in Brenthutch world where everything is either black or white?" I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, so I deal in the world of probabilities, risks and statistics. If you don't, that's fine - it must be a simpler, less confusing world to you.

Meantime back in the real world:

===============
U.S. has warmest 12 months on record
May 15, 2012

Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday.

The announcement came as NOAA reported that the U.S. also just experienced its third-warmest April on record.

“These temperatures, when added with the first quarter and previous 11 months, calculate to the warmest year-to-date and 12-month periods since recordkeeping began in 1895,” the agency reported.
==============

[lawrocket 3]

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U.S. has warmest 12 months on record
May 15, 2012

Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday.

The announcement came as NOAA reported that the U.S. also just experienced its third-warmest April on record.

“These temperatures, when added with the first quarter and previous 11 months, calculate to the warmest year-to-date and 12-month periods since recordkeeping began in 1895,” the agency reported.

Are the numbers before the 1933 adjustment or after?

Also note: yes, it was a damned mild winter. So the same people who mocked global warming because of "Snowmageddon" and the same people who said, "snowmageddon is proof of global warming" are now in the unenviable position of explaining themselves.

Meanwhile, North America's warmth was tempered, of course, by the bitter cold in Europe and Asia. Which are, of course, weather related and caused primarily by the blocking high that resulted from the negative North Atlantic Oscillation that caused warm temperatures in the lower 48, with cold and massive snowfall in Alaska (the Bering sea is still 50% above normal in ice coverage) and a grossly normal Arctic Ice area.

We're talking about global climate - not the US.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Southern_Man 0]

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===============
U.S. has warmest 12 months on record
May 15, 2012

Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday.

Weather, not climate.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[brenthutch 444]

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>Listen to yourself, in one sentence you use: could, might, could, and might again. In realville . . .

You mean "in Brenthutch world where everything is either black or white?" I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, so I deal in the world of probabilities, risks and statistics. If you don't, that's fine - it must be a simpler, less confusing world to you.

Meantime back in the real world:

===============
U.S. has warmest 12 months on record
May 15, 2012

Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday.

The announcement came as NOAA reported that the U.S. also just experienced its third-warmest April on record.

“These temperatures, when added with the first quarter and previous 11 months, calculate to the warmest year-to-date and 12-month periods since recordkeeping began in 1895,” the agency reported.
==============

That is for the United States, in the real WORLD the facts are a bit different:
NOAA GLOBAL temps:
All of 2011 11th hottest, 2012, January 19th hottest, February 22nd hottest, March, 16th hottest April 5th hottest. Hardly what one would call “unprecedented”.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2011/13

[lawrocket 3]

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as time goes on and IPCC predictions are validated, the odds of that they will be valid in the future also rises.

A couple of things with this:
(1) What makes you so sure they'll be validated? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse?
(2) Which IPCC Predictions? The ones from 1990? 1992? 1995? 2001? Or 2007?

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I'd say the very process of making them and then validating them - that's the core of what science does.

Indeed. Or invalidating them. Science is a process. When Einstein came out with special relativity, he made predictions. IT all looked pretty good, explained Mercury, but what about testing them? IT took a solar eclipse a few years later to test them. The steady state universe wasn't put on the shelf until the cosmic microwave radiation was detected. Until then, the Big Bang was a pejorative term.

But this is also different from such things as cosmology. Many are hanging their hats on detecting the Higgs Boson. IT has a TREMENDOUS value in particle physics and to help explain the nature of mass. But will the discovery of the Higgs Boson affect worldwide economic prospects?

Putting faith in finding the Higgs boson is fine. There may be a few thousand people whose careers are based on it. But what about climate science? Now we're talking energy, which is the foundation of first-world economics. That's tens of trillions of dollars per decade.

So there is something very important about whether or not they are correct. Assuming they will be validated is a big jump with a massive cost.

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I don't think anyone would claim "well, astrophysics isn't science until we actually find a black hole or watch a star form."

True. It's like predicting that Apophis won't hit us on April 13, 2029. We can predict probabilities right now, and even the ground track if it does. But look at the history of the predictions (and we're talking about newtonian mechanics here - the same math we used to get us to pinpoint moon landings) of the impact risk from Apophis. It turns out that little things like spin, heat radiation and absorption, and other gravitational influences give a margin of error in excess of 10 earth diameters by 2036 - the difference between no problem and death of millions.

This is the prediction for an asteroid in 25 years. Not the prediction of climate in 75 years, which includes many factors more of discreet interaction. Maybe they have it right. Maybe they don't. We don't know.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[billvon 3,120]

>(1) What makes you so sure they'll be validated? Isn't that putting the
>cart before the horse?

You can't be sure. As results from past IPCC predictions are validated, it becomes more likely that their methodology gives accurate predictions - but as you mention you can't be sure.

>Indeed. Or invalidating them. Science is a process.

Definitely.

>But this is also different from such things as cosmology. Many are hanging their hats
>on detecting the Higgs Boson. IT has a TREMENDOUS value in particle physics and to
>help explain the nature of mass. But will the discovery of the Higgs Boson affect
>worldwide economic prospects?

Depending on what surrounded its discovery - none to massive. Imagine what the economic impacts would be if we had a method of reducing something's mass by several orders of magnitude - say, a 747 full of cargo, or a massive iceberg, or a bullet in flight.

>But what about climate science? Now we're talking energy, which is the foundation
>of first-world economics. That's tens of trillions of dollars per decade.

Well, climate science has both a direct and indirect impact on the economy. The direct impact is the loss (and gain) of arable land due to warming, the opening of new sea routes, the decline (or increase) in real estate values due to less water being available etc. It also has an indirect impact - it could inspire a leader to spend a lot of money on renewable energy instead of coal based energy to try to avoid the more direct impacts.

>This is the prediction for an asteroid in 25 years. Not the prediction of climate in 75
>years, which includes many factors more of discreet interaction. Maybe they have it
>right. Maybe they don't. We don't know.

I agree. But we do have a pretty good idea. It's like the smoking thing again. If your kid starts smoking, will he get cancer, emphysema or COPD? No way to know. But the smart money is on not smoking - even if the resulting fights about it are painful for all involved.

[brenthutch 444]

"I agree. But we do have a pretty good idea. It's like the smoking thing again. If your kid starts smoking, will he get cancer, emphysema or COPD? No way to know. But the smart money is on not smoking - even if the resulting fights about it are painful for all involved."

Yep and it is a fact that kids that listen to rock-n-roll are more likely to do drugs than kids who don’t. It is also a fact that kids that do drugs are more likely to become heroin addicts. So using your irrefutable logic listenting to U2 makes one more susceptible to heroin addiction that ones who are not.