Mr. Abbot’s 5 proposals make good public policy sense. I wish he would have listed them first and then discussed them in detail. I suspect Mr. Abbot could write a chapter about each in any book he would care to write.
I cringe, however, when I read his remarks about “liberal agenda” and “conservative solutions” regarding scientific matters. Acid rain falls on conservatives and liberals alike. Likewise the pope, the patriarch, and the chief rabbi are all entitled to their opinions, but frankly I prefer to obtain information about the world in which I live from scientists.
When I have questions about climate change, my go-to source is — The Physics of Climate Change.
Well, I do not share your optimism because I live in a place where we now have many thunderstorms with winds ranging to over 50 mph and often over 75 mph that we did not have before with the same frequency. No big deal? Big deal for those living here because, apart from wind damage to homes, we have an electric utility DTE that has archaic infrastructure and equipment and over the air electric lines causing loss of power for days! DTE is very profitable. My point: capitalism (or corporatism if you like) is not willing to fix this easy problem by investing to upgrade their equipment and take preventing measures. Why do you think anything will be done to fix the global warming problem before it becomes unfixable? The Elon Musk types plan to relocate to Mars since they think it is much easier 😃
The observation that most of the "climate activists" have officially opposed revenue-neutral carbon taxes raises the question of whether the real agenda is to decrease CO2 emissions or increase their brand of "control over the actions of others".
The "believe the science" claims are not scientific and don't follow the scientific method. If the internal assumptions are not valid the "beliefs" are not valid or may be misleading by excluding valid options that may be more rational. We do know that some science and theories appear to be universally valid, such as thermodynamics where even the Patent Office won't issue a patent on a perpetual motion machine without a working example. However, we also know that coupling two systems that are described by the Navier-Stokes equations (oceans and atmosphere - climate models) have some problems when we lack long-term (relative to the dynamic mixing times) 3-D data on the Oceans making the results highly dependent on difficult assumptions.
With all these assumptions being so deeply buried in mathematics it is impossible for most of the activists on these issues to even discuss the problems. For example, the climate models have huge water feedbacks that depends upon the details of water concentrations in the air and the formation of clouds. The details of these processes can shift the feedback from a strong positive with water as a greenhouse gas to a positive or negative feedback with clouds. With cloud formation being smaller than the grid size adds to the difficulties.
Thanks.. I agree with you about revenue neutral carbon taxes, which I think is a key ultimately.
Re climate models.. yes, there are great complexities, but the overall energetic balance seems to work, in that predictions for just what you would expect agree with overall temperature changes.. as I described in my book .
Not being an expert in this area, I called a fellow grad-student from the 60's who was doing his thesis on the global cooling models of the day where he when on to global warming and climate change models (his is also retired). I must believe his statements that it "works". He was one of the students that were better and more interests in math that I was.
Mr. Abbot’s 5 proposals make good public policy sense. I wish he would have listed them first and then discussed them in detail. I suspect Mr. Abbot could write a chapter about each in any book he would care to write.
I cringe, however, when I read his remarks about “liberal agenda” and “conservative solutions” regarding scientific matters. Acid rain falls on conservatives and liberals alike. Likewise the pope, the patriarch, and the chief rabbi are all entitled to their opinions, but frankly I prefer to obtain information about the world in which I live from scientists.
When I have questions about climate change, my go-to source is — The Physics of Climate Change.
Well, I do not share your optimism because I live in a place where we now have many thunderstorms with winds ranging to over 50 mph and often over 75 mph that we did not have before with the same frequency. No big deal? Big deal for those living here because, apart from wind damage to homes, we have an electric utility DTE that has archaic infrastructure and equipment and over the air electric lines causing loss of power for days! DTE is very profitable. My point: capitalism (or corporatism if you like) is not willing to fix this easy problem by investing to upgrade their equipment and take preventing measures. Why do you think anything will be done to fix the global warming problem before it becomes unfixable? The Elon Musk types plan to relocate to Mars since they think it is much easier 😃
I understand. I think govt can play a role by helping making it financially attractive to upgrade.. but I am not necessarily as optimistic as Dorian.
The observation that most of the "climate activists" have officially opposed revenue-neutral carbon taxes raises the question of whether the real agenda is to decrease CO2 emissions or increase their brand of "control over the actions of others".
The "believe the science" claims are not scientific and don't follow the scientific method. If the internal assumptions are not valid the "beliefs" are not valid or may be misleading by excluding valid options that may be more rational. We do know that some science and theories appear to be universally valid, such as thermodynamics where even the Patent Office won't issue a patent on a perpetual motion machine without a working example. However, we also know that coupling two systems that are described by the Navier-Stokes equations (oceans and atmosphere - climate models) have some problems when we lack long-term (relative to the dynamic mixing times) 3-D data on the Oceans making the results highly dependent on difficult assumptions.
With all these assumptions being so deeply buried in mathematics it is impossible for most of the activists on these issues to even discuss the problems. For example, the climate models have huge water feedbacks that depends upon the details of water concentrations in the air and the formation of clouds. The details of these processes can shift the feedback from a strong positive with water as a greenhouse gas to a positive or negative feedback with clouds. With cloud formation being smaller than the grid size adds to the difficulties.
Thanks.. I agree with you about revenue neutral carbon taxes, which I think is a key ultimately.
Re climate models.. yes, there are great complexities, but the overall energetic balance seems to work, in that predictions for just what you would expect agree with overall temperature changes.. as I described in my book .
Thanks,
Not being an expert in this area, I called a fellow grad-student from the 60's who was doing his thesis on the global cooling models of the day where he when on to global warming and climate change models (his is also retired). I must believe his statements that it "works". He was one of the students that were better and more interests in math that I was.