chris@organicmatter’s Recent Comments

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  on JG

  If you're Jonah Goldberg, there's really no need to be distracted by the merits of any particular issue; you can just focus on being a total douche.

  I'm sorry, was that an ad hominem?

  Organic Matter: Blogging the environment
  On Sigh posted 4 years, 3 months ago 3 Responses

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  Again on 'the other stuff'

  I had already seen the L.A. Times article linked in the comment above, but I hadn't gotten around to writing on it.  When I saw the topic of this post on my RSS feed I was afraid I'd been scooped.  Fortunately, I am now unscoopable.

  Organic Matter: Blogging the environment
  On Legalize it, don't criticize it posted 4 years, 3 months ago 3 Responses

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  quotes

  ...it seems maddeningly obvious that, if everyone who purports to cherish wild landscape decides that he or she must own and live on a chunk of it, there won't be any more wild landscape. -- David Quammen

  And what of Nature itself, you say--that callous and cruel engine, red in tooth and fang?  Well, it is not so much of an engine as you think.  As for "red in tooth and fang," whenever I hear the phrase or its intellectual echoes I know that some passer-by has been getting life from books. -- Henry Beston

  Organic Matter: Blogging the environment
  On A walk on the slippery rocks posted 4 years, 4 months ago 15 Responses

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  uncertainty redux

  A certain amount of skepticism with respect to the likely effects of 2-5oC warming is of course warranted, but I think you seriously overstate the case.

  1.) I've got good money that I could track down a lot of ecologists and climatologists would take issue with your assertion that "we can't fully understand something as complex as an ecosystem or the global climate."  The word "fully" seems to be your faux-trump here, since you can correctly claim that we will never be able to predict ecological or climatic events with 100% certainty, but for practical purposes we understand most of these systems quite well.

  2.) You seem to present a case in which there is a tradeoff between biodiversity and human health here: "Some people might really like to have a certain number of a certain species around, but other people might hold human health or human lives as a priority over that species remaining in its 'natural' habitat."  I don't follow this tradeoff argument, and would be inclined to suggest instead that human health is inextricably linked to ecosystem health, of which biodiversity is a good indicator.

  3.) Sea-level rise is a good example for your argument, as there is a significant degree of uncertainty here.  For a recent article at Organic Matter I did quick literature review to determine the likely magnitude of sea-level rise, and the information I found was consistent with the IPCC's estimate of 28-49 cm (~1-2 ft.) by 2100.  You point out, mostly correctly that we have already "made our bed and have no choice but to sleep in it."  I say "mostly" because you're right that a certain degree of warming and sea-level rise is built into the global climate system, but to suggest that this means mitigation is useless is fallacy.  Will we have to deal with the consequences of climate change no matter what?  Yes.  Does that mean that we should continue to exacerbate the problem with abandon?  No.

  4.) I admire your argument that it would solve a root problem to increase the capacity of less-developed parts of the world to deal with inevitable problems such as sea-level rise; you're absolutely right.  At the same time I have to ask exactly how you suggest we solve the thousands-of-years-old problem of poverty by the end of the century?  Unfortunately the best we can do is to solve the problems that we can solve rather than those that we wish we could solve.  I believe that carbon emissions can be mitigated to a sustainably low level by 2100.  I do not believe that world poverty can be eliminated in a similarly short period of time.

  Organic Matter: Blogging the environment
  On Samuelson takes a swing at global warming posted 4 years, 4 months ago 14 Responses

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  uncertainty

  Samuelson's "uncertainty" is bunk.  He makes it sound as if we're uncertain as to whether warming will be somewhere between "very little" and "maybe something significant."  If I remember correctly the 99 percent confidence interval for a scenario of CO2 increasing at current rates (which, based on his first point, Samuelson ought to think is a reasonable scenario) is 2-5 degrees C.

  To say that there are uncertainty about what the effects will be is only true if we don't know the magnitude.  For any given level of warming we can make very likely predictions about what the consequences, and those predictions, even for the bottom end of 2-5C warming are catastrophic.

  Between 2 and 3oC warming coral reefs are projected to bleach annually in many regions. At the upper end of this temperature band, the risk of eliminating the Succulent Karoo and its 2800 endemic plants is very high. Moderate to large reductions in the Fynbos can be expected, with the risk of significant extinctions. Australian mainland alpine ecosystems are likely to be on the edge of disappearance, substantial extinctions of endemic Alpine flora in New Zealand are projected [28] and European alpine systems are likely to be at or above their anticipated tolerable limits of warming with some vulnerable species close to extinction. Severe loss of boreal forest in China is projected and large and adverse changes are also projected for many systems on the Tibetan plateau [29]. Large shifts in the range of European plants seem likely and a large number of Eucalypt species may expect to lie outside of their present climatic range [30]. Moderate to large effects are projected for Arctic ecosystems and boreal forests. Within this temperature range there is a likelihood of the Amazon forest suffering potentially irreversible damage leading to its collapse [31, 32].

  Please click the above link and check out the paper yourself, where you can read about what Dr. Hare predicts will have already happened between 1oC and 2oC warming, and what we can expect above 3oC.

  Organic Matter: Blogging the environment
  On Samuelson takes a swing at global warming posted 4 years, 4 months ago 14 Responses