Bradford Plumer Takes On Climate Change Critic Jim Manzi

The New Republic:

Over at our new In-House Critics blog, Jim Manzi has written a long riposte to Al Gore on the subject of climate policy. It's a thoughtful essay that's very much worth reading in full, but if you're pressed for time, here's Manzi's conclusion: "[A] massive carbon tax or a cap-and-trade rationing system would likely cost more than the damages it would prevent." Not surprisingly, I disagree with this and want to make a few points in response.

Read the whole story: The New Republic

Comments

[ReedYoung]

03:06 AM on 07/09/2010

"Manzi's conclusion: '[A] massive carbon tax or a cap-and-trade rationing system would likely cost more than the damages it would prevent'" is now refuted by the CBO, which says a carbon tax will REDUCE our current costs $19 Billion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/cbo-climate-bill-would-cu_n_639230.html

NOW I really want to read Manzi's flawed analysis.

[StephenBP]

08:46 PM on 07/06/2010

The pea and walnut shell discipline of economics is ill equipped to predict almost anything of consequence IMO. Lacking the eye of the artist or scientist, the economist seems blinded to anything that is not the color of money. Incalculable values are all around them, but if the economist can't buy it, it doesn't exist. Hidden costs are ignored if they are not easily factored in to our primitive trading arrangements, or if those true costs threaten someone's horded gold. Ignorance is fostered to fatten the golden calf.
What if, worst case, nature and nature's God are saying.... your wealth or the survival of your species... what then Mr. economist? Are you up to speed on that level of reality yet?
Hopefully the human species will engineer its way out of this mess created by the believers of the shell game economics.

[ReedYoung]

10:17 PM on 07/06/2010

I think any craft can be done well or badly. On the one hand, certain economists (Krugman, Roubini, Taleb) are better than others (Greenspan, Bernanke, Summers). On the other hand, the lousy ones fail upward, in my opinion precisely by enabling the most socially and environmentally damaging policies, which ingratiates themselves to the least competent and most corrupt decision-makers in business and politics, ie those most willing to reward incompetents. So we hear more from lousy economists so much that it's easy to forget that any exist who know what they're talking about.

But good economists apply two main frameworks to climate change mitigation:

Risk Analysis
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch2s2-2-6.html

Cost-Benefit Analysis
http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/30/global-warming-economics-low-cost-high-benefit/

Competent application of either framework clearly indicates swift, dramatic policy change. I think the obstacle is getting any Republican Senator who is not from Maine to pay any attention to any of the competent economists, just as it is to get them to pay any attention to any competent climate scientists. They'd rather pretend "Lord" Chris Monckton has something to contribute to our nation's policy debates.
http://www.capanddividend.org/?q=node/257

[StephenBP]

07:57 AM on 07/07/2010

Yeah, I should have put some qualifiers in that rant. Thanks. My bad. Cheers.

[ReedYoung]

01:37 PM on 07/07/2010

How can the world’s leading governments and scientific experts and McKinsey and the traditionally conservative International Energy Agency agree that we can avoid catastrophe for such a small cost?

Because that’s what the scientific and economic literature — and real-world experience — says. The IPCC summary report, which is, after all, primarily a literature review, notes:

Both bottom-up and top-down studies indicate that there is high agreement and much evidence of substantial economic potential for the mitigation of global GHG emissions over the coming decades that could offset the projected growth of global emissions or reduce emissions below current levels.

In fact, the bottom up studies — the ones that look technology by technology, which I believe are more credible — have even better news:

Bottom-up studies suggest that mitigation opportunities with net negative costs have the potential to reduce emissions by around 6 GtCO2-eq/yr in 2030.

Wow! A 20% reduction in global emissions might be possible in a quarter century with net economic benefits!
http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/30/global-warming-economics-low-cost-high-benefit/

[SeenItBefore]

06:41 PM on 07/06/2010

Yep, have always thought 'global warming' to be a misnomer, used extensively by the right to cloud the discussion.

Climatic change is a fact. Historic records show this to be true.

Man induced climatic change is a theory, with some convincing history over the last 150 years.

Since it's impossible to turn back the clock and do A-B comparisons between Earth Alpha and Earth Beta, I see the following postulate as near to truth as my pea brain can imagine:

If the believers are wrong, not much happens. If the deniers are wrong, the Earth and most mammals are in for a difficult, if not, impossible time of it.

[chrisd3]

08:23 PM on 07/06/2010

"If the believers are wrong, not much happens."

This is the part of your post I'd disagree with. If the believers are wrong, we reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, we stop or reduce environmentally damaging drilling and mining, and we eliminate the pollution from burning fossil fuels. So doing the right thing now is a win whether or not climate change is for real (and it is, by the way).

[Overtone]

04:06 PM on 07/06/2010

Gulf oil may have a surprising, life threatening, impact on millions of people.

See What to Do at http://www.aesopinstitute.org The subtitle is now: 350 or Else - The Unrecognized Threat from the Gulf Geyser

400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could endanger millions of lives. We are presently at 390 ppm. The safe limit is 350 ppm. See www.350.org

Ironically, confronting the surprising dimensions of the problem might generate a huge number of jobs.

A very thin film on the surface of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans threatens to raise temperatures toward a catastrophic Tipping Point.

Consider the possibility that a massive mobilization is needed to combat what might be looming if substantial oil is coming from fissures in the sea floor and the leak cannot be capped.

Little known and hard to believe breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies appear capable of helping to supersede oil much more rapidly than might be easily understood.

See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.

Cars and trucks could begin to cost-competitively leave behind gasoline and oil.

We need far more robust and sensible steps to massively attack the problems in the Gulf and prevent as much oil as possible from reaching the Atlantic ocean.

Gaining independence from oil is possible. Making it happen rapidly enough may require a greater effort that was required to respond to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

[SirRealDeal]

02:38 PM on 07/06/2010

for scat.

I did a google search on Dayton Study, Dayton Study Ice Age, Ice Age Dayton Study.

Kept coming up with this as the first item

RELIGION BRIEFS
‎
Fremont News Messenger - 3 days ago
Sunday School for all ages begins at 9:15 am The office is closed Monday for the holiday; Tuesday -- 9 am Pericope Study Group; Thursday -- 5 pm ice cream ...

[scat]

04:50 PM on 07/06/2010

1) BS did the search and nothing of the sort came up.

2) The Dayton study was a link provided to state someone's case in defense of my assertion. I didn't quote it. Rather I read it, and it discusses inter and intra glacial periods.

[SirRealDeal]

06:49 PM on 07/06/2010

The point is scat, you mention the Dayton Study. I did a google search and came up with nothing on anything called the dayton study. Since you are citing it as your source, provide a link so that we may discuss what it says rather than rely upon your statements.

Also, your right if you google just dayton study, you don't come up with the religious item. However combine it with ice age and you do come up with the religious item.

[ReedYoung]

01:15 PM on 07/07/2010

Are you asserting that that "Dayton study" is
(1) an authoritative source
(2) which supports your claims?

If "yes" to either (1) or (2) or both, then yes, you do owe us all a working URL where we can download that document and evaluate its merit for ourselves.

[Shan Wells]

02:29 PM on 07/06/2010

Scat- if you wan tot assert natural cycle arguments, you need to do two things:

1. Identify the mechanism behind this alleged cycle. Absent a forcing of some sort, there will be no change in global energy balance. The balance is changing, so we need to find this mysterious cause.

2. Come up with an explanation for why a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas does not affect the global temperature. Theory predicts temperature will rise given an enhanced greenhouse effect, so why is it not happening?

The mainstream climate science community has provided a well-developed, internally consistent theory that accounts for observed effects. It makes predictions and provides explanations that are backed up with empirical data.

A naive reading of temperature cycles indicates we should be experiencing a cooling trend now -- and indeed we were gradually cooling over the length of the pre-industrial Holocene, around .5C averaged over 8,000 years.

However, we are not experiencing cooling, but alarmingly rapid warming. Compare the speed of those past temp. fluctuations to today's changes: leaving aside the descents into glaciation, which were much more gradual, the sudden jumps up in temperature every ~100,000 years represent a rate of change roughly ten times slower what we are currently witnessing.

No natural cause has been identified for this phenomenon. There is no climatological theory in which CO2 does not drive temperature. Natural cycle precedents do not exhibit the same extreme changes we're now witnessing.

[milty]

02:44 PM on 07/06/2010

It appears many scientist's disaree. Note the last paragraph.

http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/

[Shan Wells]

02:49 PM on 07/06/2010

Even if we were to take your lists at face value and agree that they are not fabrications, you have 198 scientists who are deniers. No line that up against the hundreds of thousands of scientists from around the world that are in consensus with the theory.

You are basing your beliefs on the fringe of the fringe.

[bjstucker]

02:54 PM on 07/06/2010

But many more agree. Are the dozens of scientific academies that have issued declarations confirming anthropogenic global warming just chock full of liars?

[scat]

04:46 PM on 07/06/2010

so you are going to bring up the laws of thermodynamics. I counter that by asking the definition of the closed system.

You continue to fail to address the main issue. which is the lack of comparable data. Without, it is a guess. There are no baselines to evaluate and compare our influence on the cycle of climate change.

For whatever reason, you are unwilling to accept of 100 years of "climate" data obtained by us is or can be a statistical anomoly comparative to the overall data sampling that is required to draw proper conclusions.

[Shan Wells]

06:01 PM on 07/06/2010

I have five reasons not to accept 150 years as the sum total of our knowledge on climate:

1. Existing CRU records go back 150 years. We know, therefore, that 1998 and 2005 are the warmest two years in at least the last 150 years.

2. Using Borehole measurements, we can reasonably conclude that it is warmer now than any time in at least the last 500 years.

3. Using proxy data from tree rings, ocean sediment, and others, we can reasonably say it is warmer now than any other time in at least the last 1,000 years.

The only other candidate for a higher temperature period is called the Holocene Climatic Optimum, 6,000 years ago. Reconstructions of Holocene temperature, regional and global, all super-imposed with an average of all of them combined represents the best estimate available of global temperatures in the Holocene. It is hotter now.

4. Thus, we can reasonably believe it is warmer now than at any other time in at least the last 10,000 years.

The current interglacial ended just some 11,000 years ago. The record of glacial-interglacial cycles can be read in Antarctic ice core analysis. According to this data, it is warmer now than at any other time in over the last 100,000 years.

5. And that is a bit more than 100 years. It is, in fact, the entire history of our species.

[Shan Wells]

06:19 PM on 07/06/2010

Closed system definition:
http://www.climate.nau.edu/climate_change.html

[YouTubeJEFF9K]

02:12 PM on 07/06/2010

I thought that global-warming deny-ers went into hiding during heat waves.

[seanshawn]

02:20 PM on 07/06/2010

No that big snow storm proved Global warming as a myth..

Dontcha listen to Glen Beck? He's the cat's meow.

[ancientmarinader]

02:23 PM on 07/06/2010

The "there is no warming" folks did. They'll come back this winter.

But the "warming is good" and "you can't prove it's us" folks are still hanging around.

[Shan Wells]

02:12 PM on 07/06/2010

Scat- evolution is a fact insofar as anything is science is a fact. You misunderstand the difference between theory and hypothesis.

Evolution is a "theory" in the scientific sense of the term "theory;" it is an established scientific model that explains observations and makes predictions through mechanisms such as natural selection.

When scientists say "evolution is a fact" they are using one of two meanings of the word "fact". One meaning is empirical, and when this is what scientists mean, then "evolution" is used to mean observed changes in allele frequencies or traits of a population over successive generations.

Another way "fact" is used is to refer to a certain kind of theory, one that has been so powerful and productive for such a long time that it is universally accepted by scientists. When scientists say evolution is a fact in this sense, they mean it is a fact that all living organisms have descended from a common ancestor (or ancestral gene pool) even though this cannot be directly observed. This implies more tangibly that it is a fact that humans share a common ancestor with monkeys.

The "theory" of gravity, of electromagnetism, of many other scientific "facts' are supported in just the same way.

[scat]

02:40 PM on 07/06/2010

no, i fully understand the difference. Law is really a theory that describes a single action. I get it.

the point of the statement and the use of fact what to examplify on how many use the term as such which is incorrect.

Furthermore, the lack of comparable data regarding climate change one cannot say with any significant probability there is human causal.

Now lets talk about your definitions of fact. No scientist should be using the word fact. However, it is used.

[Shan Wells]

02:45 PM on 07/06/2010

Sorry, Scat, I don't think you are getting it. there is no "lack of comparable data regarding climate change..[so that]...one cannot say with any significant probability there is human causal."

On the contrary, there is a high statistical probability that human are causing it. Please see my previous point on what you need to produce if you want to assert an argument from natural cause.

[scat]

04:41 PM on 07/06/2010

also, the term fact should never be used in science. For something to be fact, there must be 100% certainity with no obvious exceptions. Law and theories deal in probability.

Now regarding evolution, emperical data and embryology suggest with a high probability that the theory is valid. However, to state it as fact, no matter your definitions, is false.

[ReedYoung]

07:51 PM on 07/06/2010

These are not peer-reviewed formal science reports you and I are writing, clown. For the sake of public policy discourse, which is what we're having, the "95% probability" of scientists is "fact" to you and me because it is the best information available. That's a fact.

[milty]

01:45 PM on 07/06/2010

I'm sure those who worship at the altar of AGW will consider this man a traitor.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/debates/copenhagen_article/8979

Why do the Orwellian HP mods continue to block this comment? Can't handle some truth?

[DocSkull]

02:06 PM on 07/06/2010

Lindzen takes money from energy companies but produces no research.

[milty]

02:25 PM on 07/06/2010

The typical rote response. I imagine all of these scientists are bought and paid for by big oil and coal.

http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/

[Shan Wells]

02:36 PM on 07/06/2010

The author, Peter Taylor, asserts this:

"...top scientists at NASA have agreed that this period of warming over the past 25 years is entirely due to the short-wave radiation from sunlight, with the ocean transferring that heat to the land."

Could you please provide a link to a real NASA site that verifies this?

[scat]

01:33 PM on 07/06/2010

For anyone to say with 100% certainity. that there is human causal is a stretch. It may be true or may not be true. There is no comparable baseline.

That is like saying, evolution is fact.

[DocSkull]

01:37 PM on 07/06/2010

If you don't understand the argument, how can you say it is wrong?

[scat]

01:38 PM on 07/06/2010

try to follow. I am not saying it is wrong. Rather, what I am saying is that there isn't enough quality data to draw a conclusion.

[bjstucker]

01:37 PM on 07/06/2010

uh...evolution is a fact.

[scat]

01:43 PM on 07/06/2010

ughh. Scientifically, it isn't. First, in science you don't talk fact, you talk probability.

There is no direct link that humans evolved from anything. Without that link, it isn't fact.

[scat]

12:56 PM on 07/06/2010

everyone does realize that we are technically still in an ice age. right? Perhaps this cycle is ending as it did before.

[ancientmarinader]

01:08 PM on 07/06/2010

Ice Age? I don't see any ice? You don't believe those scientists do you?

[scat]

01:16 PM on 07/06/2010

Funny thing those pesky polar ice caps. There are indicative of a ice age. Which we are still in.

Funny place Antarctica, it once was a temperate zone.

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

01:19 PM on 07/06/2010

Just as sure as everyone realizes that CO2 in the atmosphere technically traps heat otherwise destined for escape to space

[scat]

01:25 PM on 07/06/2010

well since algae is the biggest producer of oxygen, we should want the sea levels to rise.

[Austintatious]

12:19 PM on 07/06/2010

The evidence of the harms to be caused by human induced climate change is overwhelming. The so called invisible costs, additional costs to be realized in the future for the ill advised energy policies of yesterday and today are already being incurred, this developing envioronmental and economic disaster in the Gulf certainly the most dramatic example, to date. It's way past time to afford legitimacy to those denying either the existence or the magnitude of the climate crisis, including individuals like Mr. Manzi.

At this point, any perspective denying the emergent quality of the climate crisis, the immensely harmful impact it will have on the Earth and its peoples, or in any way arguing for other than an immediate and comprehensive response to this emergency, is not only insane but irresponsible in the extreme. It is time to move on, to leave the deniers or the qualifiers of the crisis behind. It is time to act, whether they are on board or not. And it is certainly time to acknowledge that according those denying or minimizing the threat any legitimacy as authorities to be seriously considered is something humankind simply can no longer afford. The futures of my children and yours hang in the balance.

[Dan1902]

11:34 AM on 07/06/2010

How come everything comes down to the fiduciary with right wingers!? Someone needs to tell them it won't matter what it costs if we are all either drowning,frying up,or getting blown away!!

[Hoodoo X]

11:51 AM on 07/06/2010

"How come everything comes down to the fiduciary with right wingers!?"

Because everything costs money. If you want to burden US corporations with an additional tax (ultimately passed on to consumers - that is how it works), are you sure you want to do that during a recession?
And, maybe that money is better spent on more scholarships for physics, and engineering students working on alternative energy technologies. There are trade offs.

[Dan1902]

11:59 AM on 07/06/2010

The main word you don't want to hear is sacrifice!!! Sacrificing any convenience is totally foreign to the selfish masses!!! Now I don't know if you are one of them,but sacrifice is a bad word in modern America,and that is why nothing changes!We are destroying our planet,our country,and our economy,because our selfish society refuses to sacrifice!!

[ReedYoung]

12:20 PM on 07/07/2010

If that was true, Hoodoo X, then why haven't the corporate tax cuts of the past 30 years been passed on to consumers?

"Because everything costs money. If you want to burden US corporations with an additional tax (ultimately passed on to consumers - that is how it works) ..."

Plainly, not true, just by inspection of top marginal tax rates and our common knowledge of the general welfare at different times in our history.
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

True, top marginal tax rates are personal and technically differ from corporate tax rates, but you and I both know they are tightly correlated.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/15/report-most-heavily-taxed_n_203825.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/the-great-tax-con-job_b_242065.html

[jazzman]

11:24 AM on 07/06/2010

It doesn't matter whether we debate climate change anymore or not. Human beings are incapable of change unless there is a clear, dramatic, acute catastrophe that calls for action and then the ability to respond is questionable. Look at the BP or financial scandals to see how we humans just go on in the face of dire warnings. We're like those proverbial frogs that they throw into cold water and then on whom they slowly turn up the heat. They don't register the slow changes in the rising temperature and remain in the water boiling to death. We're the same.

Here's the kicker. Mother nature, the thinning ozone layer, the Sun, don't care what FOX News thinks. It's getting hotter every year, storms are getting stronger, and people are going to die and suffer because those three entities don't do opinion polls, politics, or punditry. They just follow their own immutable laws of physics whether we like it or not.

[scat]

12:57 PM on 07/06/2010

and your kicker has happened before without humans even existing. So, how is this any different?

[ancientmarinader]

01:11 PM on 07/06/2010

Extinctions have happened without human involvement before as well. But there is no question that we are driving the current extinction with our land use policies. Just because something can happen naturally, doesnt mean that we should encourage it.

It's been millions of years since the CO2 was this high, and the oceans were much higher as well.

[dfranz]

11:10 AM on 07/06/2010

We wouldn't want to raise the cost of driving our cars or heating our houses just because we're destroying the planet. We own this orb and as the United States has shown over and over, we can do anything we want. I mean who will stop us.

I guess it's not who, but what.