benp’s Recent Comments

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  Just goes to show...

  That Gristians and Christians speak the same language...On File under Epitaphs for Humanity posted 1 year, 7 months ago 7 Responses

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  Dessler lying in the sun... and on Gristmill

  What is interesting about Dessler's inability to discuss global warming without recourse to crude analogy is that it reveals a strategy of his own, and the poverty of climate change "ethics". Climate alarmists find it so difficult to connect their arguments to people that they need to seek abstract parallels in the structure of dubious arguments, and those of their opponents, despite their being totally unrelated. Thus we see Naomi Oreskes struggling to identify continuity between the legal defence offered by tobacco companies and the inertia of the environmental movement in the USA. And we see Marc D. Davidson attempting to diminish the moral character of climate change "deniers" by comparing their arguments to the arguments in favour of the continuation of slavery made nearly 200 years ago.

  These are sure signs of the exhaustion of the climate change argument. It borrows the moral high-ground from history, but struggles to make the moral case for 'action' on its own terms; climate change denial is the equivalent of being in favour of the slave trade. The climate change argument borrows scientific credibility from medicine; climate change is like cancer, and climate scientists are like doctors. This unsophisticated reasoning isn't designed to shed any light on the matters at hand. It merely uses this borrowed moral and scientific certainty to position climate alarmists on the "good" side.

  [from http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/03/more-geometric- ... ]On Similarities between the skin cancer and climate change 'scams' posted 1 year, 7 months ago 173 Responses

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  Catastrophism is Surrogate Politics

  George says something interesting here.

  'Some of us who speculate about the possibility of catastrophe do so because we began to question the received wisdom of economists and politicians in the first place.'

  This seems to me to be a fairly bold indication that George's catastrophism is both political, and prior to scientific observation. Curiously, he then says,

  'You assume we have a priori assumptions and biases (perhaps because you do yourself, I don't know).'

  I don't think I have assumed it. It is there in black and white.

  There are problems with politics and economics, of course. But it seems that you're looking to science to fill the vacuum that's been left by abandoning them. The problem is that now "science" is a stand-in for morals, values, principles, and politics and economics; it is being asked to determine a direction in the way that those things previously did. But it can't do it. That's why the science you seem to be offering needs catastrophe for currency and legitimacy. Without the narrative of catastrophe, questions about how to live, or what to live for, that go beyond mere survival emerge, but cannot be answered by scientism. Without "science" underscoring the catastrophic narrative with superficial plausibility, there are no moral imperatives, no emergency measures, and no urgency driving collective purpose.

  Similarly, the only way you seem able to challenge economists and politicians is by appealing to disaster. But this does not reveal a sophisticated, principled objection to what politicians or economists are saying, or offering a way that things might reasonably improved. Environmentalists, for example, do not challenge the excesses of capitalism on the basis of fundamental moral problems with organising society according to the principles of lassez faire, but because "it doesn't work", according to "scientific" observations of the climate. And interestingly, the things which are regarded as failures, are in fact its successes - it's ability to deliver innovation, and cheaper products, and so on. In other words, the reason that capitalism is "bad" is because of all the things that are in fact otherwise morally good. The understanding of what is good and bad in environmentalism is determined not by the quality of human relationships, but by environmental "science".

  George says that I need to show a 'plausible counter argument ... and further demonstrate the vector by which people panicking will do more harm'. But I'm not making an argument about the difference between two harms. He also says, "One climatologist on one subject does not an argument make", seemingly asking me to provide the names of some more researchers who have evidence that counters Rees and Lovelock, etc. The IPCC, AR4 report does not talk about catastrophe, as Hulme indicated it wouldn't. The language used in the blog post above, such as catastrophe, and "a very grim fate for our children", isn't in any of the IPCC reports, and so to legitimise their use, Romm has to say instead that the IPCC "understates how dire things are", and asks us instead to look at the work of just Hansen instead of the "thousands of scientists" that elsewhere on the blog, we're being asked to invest our confidence in, against the paid-off mavericks in the sceptical camp. Similarly, the language used by the alarmists you cite is not matched by the IPCC. The "consensus" position provided by the IPCC is different to the scenarios given by alarmists. That's not to hold the IPCC beyind challenge - I believe the reports are very changeable. It does however, show that the matter is much less clear than you, or Romm claim it is, and that the alarmists - Romm included - are as 'out there' as the wacky denialists. In this respect, it is the IPCC versus the alarmists, not Hulme versus Rees and Lovelock.On Please stop calling them 'skeptics' posted 1 year, 8 months ago 40 Responses

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  Questioning 'question everything'

  It is funny that George points us to his blog, optimistically titled 'question everything', yet then determines the validity of an argument on the weight of publishing histories -- mine versus Martin Rees' -- afterRomm has told us about 'nullius in verba', which he translated as 'take nobody's word'. George isn't looking to 'question everything' at all, and wants us to take things on the words of someone, illustrating at least one fundamental inconsistency betweenRomm and Mobus.

  He continues, "But benp will probably object that there is a distinct difference between real avalanches and the mathematical theory. I hope this time s/he provides us with an explanation of what that distinction is."

  I would argue instead that there is a difference between humans and snowflakes. Do snowflakes panic about an imminent avalanche, or global warming, even when it's not likely? No, but humans do worry that the combined weight of their effects on the world will cause a precipitous change which is necessarily bad - when evidently, it is also good. Snowflakes cannot question anything, let alone everything. Have we fully questioned today's preoccupation with catastrophe? No. We take it for granted, and catastrophe has become the keystone of contemporary political discussions from climate change to the war on terror - all of which captured by Rees. But doom saying cannot be explained mathematically. There is something different about humans.

  George pitches my publication record against Rees' (which I agree reveals no contest), but if he needs all arguments to rest on authority, he could read my previous posts more carefully. As MikeHulme said, 'to state that climate change will be "catastrophic" hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.' And in this battle between received wisdoms -- taking different people's words for it -- Hulme is a climate scientist, and Rees is an astronomer. I win.

  But I don't win, because it was never my argument that scientific arguments can be settled by pissing contests about qualifications. I prefer to question things, unlike George.

  It does not follow from 'the climate is changing' that 'there will be a catastrophe'. Our vulnerability to climate is not simply a measure of what the climate does. We can organise ourselves in a way that snowflakes can't - by responding to the ideas on this blog, for example and cutting CO2 in the hope of preventing climate change. On the other hand, we can see that different societies have adapted to similar and changing climates, with different levels of success. Where people are poorer, they are more vulnerable to climate, whether it is changing or not. Instead of taking George's mathematical determinism for granted, we could try questioning the logic of responding to the imperatives issued by 'mathematical' projections, on the basis that humans organised are not equivalent to predictable entities in a simulation. George wants us to organise ourselves according to the simulation, and this appears to be acknowledging on the one hand that humans can organise, but on the other that they are necessarily vulnerable to climate. The consequence of organising society on the basis that humans live within their 'ecological means' is (or would be) that they are necessarily more vulnerable to a changing ecology, and less able to escape it. George's mathematical determinism is a self-fullfilling prophecy; it is a way to guarentee ecological disaster as a consequence of our own, deliberate actions. On Please stop calling them 'skeptics' posted 1 year, 8 months ago 40 Responses

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  Hypocrite

  David Roberts February 25 2008 :

  [Greenpeace's] effortless breach of security at one of the world's biggest and busiest airports was a huge embarrassment for its administrators, obviously -- a "major investigation" has been launched. But it also did a brilliant job of attracting attention to the protest, and to the fact that aviation is a major culprit in climate change, aided and abetted by subsidies from the same governments that are publicly proclaiming concern over climate. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/25/17413/6266

  David Roberts March 12 2008 :

  I'm at the airport, using a painfully slow wi-fi connection, boarding in about 20 min.

  __________

  David Roberts, climate criminal and hypocrite. On Lots of important news on climate policy, hastily summarized posted 1 year, 8 months ago 1 Response