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Dealing With Crises
Noam Scheiber says "our political system isn't ideally suited to dealing with financial and economic crises." Ezra Klein begs to differ:
Indeed, I think our political system is actually fairly well-designed for short-term crises. The problem is long-term crises like global warming or health costs. As Peter Orszag wrote back on his CBO blog, "our political system doesn’t deal well with gradual, long-term problems" that require "trading off up-front costs in exchange for long-term benefits." Few Congressmen want to raise taxes tomorrow to reduce carbon a decade from now. Lots of Congressmen don't want the economy to collapse if they have to run for reelection next year. For that reason, I'm much more confident in the system's ability to react agilely and seriously to the economic crisis than global warming. The economic crisis, after all, threatens their reelection. Incumbents often don't survive depressions. Conversely, I think conventional wisdom is that it's fixing global warming, rather than global warming itself, that poses the largest political threat to incumbent legislators.
I think that's right. In fact, I'd go further: not only can we respond fairly well to short-term crises, we actually have responded fairly well to the current economic meltdown. There have been plenty of miscues and half measures along the way, but in the space of 18 months the Fed has created an alphabet soup of term lending facilities; Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG have been nationalized; interest rates have been reduced to near zero; TARP was passed and hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into the banking system; the Fed has launched plans to rescue the commercial paper market, the money market, and the consumer loan market; FDIC insurance has been raised to $250,000; Detroit has been bailed out; and an $800 billion stimulus measure has been passed. Some of these actions might have been late or misguided — it could hardly be otherwise considering the depth and freakishness of the financial implosion — but all things considered, the willingness of our political system to deal with this crisis hasn't been all that bad. If we could muster half this much energy, mistakes and all, on behalf of global warming I'd be ecstatic.
Part of the reason
Kevin Drum >"...If we could muster half this much energy, mistakes and all, on behalf of global warming I'd be ecstatic."
One of the reasons we (the international community & governments) can`t do so is stuff like this.
Of course no one actually knows one way or the other.
"There are three kinds of men:
1. The ones that learn by reading.
2. The few who learn by observation.
3. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." - Will Rogers
I'm afraid you are right.
And this also extends to avoiding or mitigating future crises. If short term benefits can be had via ignoring future problems, thats just what happens. So global warming, preparing for post peak oil, creeping exponential cost growth of healthcare, politically the path of least resistance is to put these sorts of problems off.
The global warming issue is
The global warming issue is a real bear, because while not preparing to deal with it is dangerous, those against preparation can make "relative situation" arguments; they can point out that all of the US's sacrifices won't mean much if China (now the largest net CO2 polluter in the world) and the rest of the Developing World doesn't go along, and it doesn't look like they will.
depends on the administration
The short term problems get dealt with because they are obvious. When there is a flood (except for NO), a fire, an invasion then the populace is roused and action is taken. On something like climate change we could take action. It wouldn't happen overnight. But a president could take many years to sow the seeds, lay the groundwork, educate the public and then come up with a sensible plan. I think most educated people understand that climate change is a problem though we are not agreed on its urgency or remedy. In Japanese there is an expression that applies to this; nemawashi. It literally means "digging around the roots" as a gardener does in caring for the garden. The broader meaning is that long before going public with a proposal you invest the time to lobby quietly in the background so that by the time the issue comes up for discussion everyone has already been brought on board.
It wasn't perfect but we did come up with a response to chlorinated hydrocarbons destroying the ozone layer. That was something of a long term threat. It took a while to convince people that their deodorant cans were destroying the ozone layer. I think we are still releasing too many ozone destroying chemicals into the air, but we did come up with a response.
Of course the problem is that while you are trying to communicate ideas and slowly build up support you have the hysterical clowns on the right doing all they can to distract and derail any sort of public discussion.
here's a data point
If we could muster half this much energy, mistakes and all, on behalf of global warming I'd be ecstatic.
You may or may not be glad to know DARPA is investigating geoengineering in search of global warming solutions.
While I would ordinarily look on this development with alarm, I find I'm actually kind of relieved. Because I'm pretty sure we're going to need some intrusively extreme countermeasures before it's all said and done.
And they did invent the Internet, after all.
It's not our system, it's human nature.
It seems to me that human beings, have evolved to respond primarily to the danger at hand, not to the one that could happen in the future. So, we can bail out AIG while the sea levels rise and not feel too concerned about our priorities.
regarding Japanese climate researchers
I read that link. Rather bizarre. Hard to get my head around that. Comparing climate modeling to astrology is way over the top ridiculous. From the summary it seems they are throwing up a lot of uncertainty and doubt without shedding any light on the situation. I don't know these people but I'm suspicious of their motives. We would need some Japanese researchers familiar with them to calibrate this response.
I lived in Japan for quite a while and found the indirect line of argument in this summary very familiar. It may be that there is more meat in the full report but the summary was full of "insufficiently understood" and "not yet clearly decided". It is like presenting a numerical proof and the other person just says "au contraire".
It will be interesting to see the response from the IPCC.
Consider the converse
Okay, so you state the government isn't very good at solving long-term problems because they only think about the short-term reelection.
What if the long-term consequences of "fixing" this economic crisis are far worse than the crisis itself?
That's the flaw in this reasoning. If you make the statement that politicians won't engage in politically unpopular policies today to solve long-term problems, you have to also believe (as I do) that politicians will engage in politically popular programs today even if the long-term result is selling our children and grandchildren into debt.
Government has shown, time and again, a willingness to spend today what has to be repaid only after the next election cycle. That's NOT a good thing.
Building a lot of windmills
tagged as:- solution
Building a lot of windmills with all our excess capacity would be a great start.
"not only can we respond
"not only can we respond fairly well to short-term crises, we actually have responded fairly well to the current economic meltdown. "
Even more efficiently than the Russian kleptocracy!
A rising sea of denialist rubbish
daCascadian wrote: "One of the reasons we (the international community & governments) can`t do so is stuff like this."
The Japanese organization JSTOR that produced that report is an energy-industry funded group -- they are NOT "climate researchers". And the report is rubbish, of the same sort as the pseudoscientific denialist drivel cranked out by the Heartland Institute and other ExxonMobil-funded propaganda mills masquerading as "conservative" think tanks in the USA.
It is certainly true that one of the reasons, if not THE reason, that governments have not already taken stronger action to reduce carbon pollution is the very, very successful denialist propaganda campaigns funded by the fossil fuel corporations, which have proved very effective at deceiving the public and thus undermining public support for the necessary actions.
And now that Cheney and Bush are no longer in the White House to run the executive branch as a wholly-owned subsidiary of ExxonMobil, Chevron, et al, and now that the Obama administration and the Democratic majority Congress are moving to take action -- however inadequate -- to reduce CO2 emissions, the fossil fuel corporations' campaign of deceit will kick into overdrive.
As the legitimate scientific community becomes ever more alarmed at the world's ongoing, accelerating emissions and the rapid, extreme effects that current levels of anthropogenic warming are already having -- both of which are outpacing the worst-case IPCC scenarios of only a couple of years ago -- the media will be ever more saturated with corporate-sponsored denialist propaganda. You can already see this everywhere, from George Will's blatantly dishonest columns in the Washington Post to the Ditto-Head denialist comments on every blog where climate change is discussed.
Climate Change as a Futures Market
Well, that Japanese report has been out for a month and Secular Animist, you are the first to make the all-too-familiar claim that the scientists are guilty by association with the wrong sort--although I wish you would criticize the science instead. The Japanese are way ahead of us on researching alternative energies, as I write here: http://newsfan.typepad.co.uk/pestle/2009/03/green-technology-and-hype.html. It's not like they have a vested interest in proving climate change wrong.
More to Kevin's point, I think that our system is acting a bit like a future's market and betting against climate change as the catastrophic experience that some so desperately want to convince us is inevitable. In fact, slow as it may seem, we seem to coming up with a proportionate solution--cap and trade, investment in alternative sources of generation and possibly modest fuel taxes, accompanied by retro-fitting of our buildings to make them greener. This set of policies appears to command sufficient support to get through our unwieldy political infrastructure, and more to the point, makes sense whether or not global climate change is the real bogeyman.
Even the most committed climate change advocate understands that we will need to take staged action. Obama's policy allows us to take the first steps while we actually collect data on what the climate is doing over a period of time. Secular Animist wants us to ignore the fact that temperatures have plateaued over the past decade and that the Japanese scientists are not alone in expressing doubts about the Crusade.
In retrospect, our policy debates and movements in fits and starts may end up looking suspiciously like wisdom. There are only a very few--not scientists and people with a vested commercial interest in the outcome--who say we have to act in the next 10 minutes or we are doomed. Let's do the right thing on the low hanging fruit and collect data.
Tom Fuller wrote: "I wish
Tom Fuller wrote: "I wish you would criticize the science instead."
There is no "science" in the JSTOR report to criticize -- it has no content except long-debunked pseudoscience and the ill-informed opinions of cranks who don't understand even the basics of climate science.
Tom Fuller wrote: "temperatures have plateaued over the past decade"
That's a blatant falsehood. Temperatures have not "plateaued" over the past decade.
Tom Fuller wrote: "Obama's policy allows us to take the first steps while we actually collect data on what the climate is doing over a period of time."
We already have plenty of data on "what the climate is doing over a period of time" -- not only during the past century, and particularly the last 50 years, of rapid, accelerating anthropogenic warming, but from paleoclimate research (e.g. ice cores) we have data on what the climate has been doing for hundreds of thousands of years.
There is absolutely NO question that (1) CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" and increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 cause the Earth system to retain more of the Sun's energy and get warmer; that (2) human activities, principally the burning of fossil fuels, have released huge amounts of long-sequestered "fossil" carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 over the last century; and that (3) this rapid and extreme anthropogenic increase in CO2 is causing a rapid and extreme warming of the Earth system, which is already having severe detrimental effects on the climate, hydrosphere and biosphere.
Anyone who denies these facts is ignorant or a liar. And there are plenty of people who do confidently deny these facts, precisely because they are ignorant as a result of being deceived by liars.
As for the proposals being put forward by Obama and the Democratic majority Congress, it is surely a huge improvement over the denial and stonewalling of the Bush administration and Republicans like Senator Inhofe. And it is certainly true that there is a lot of "low-hanging fruit" that we can go after -- particularly in the realm of efficiency, and basic policies to support and encourage the private sector's existing enthusiasm for wind and solar technologies (the top recipient of private venture capital investments in 2008 was Nanosolar, a manufacturer of innovative, high-efficiency, ultra-low-cost thin-film photovoltaics).
But having said that, the emissions reduction goals that Obama and the Democrats have publicly embraced fall far, far short of what mainstream climate scientists say is needed if we are to have any hope of averting the most catastrophic effects of anthropogenic global warming. Yes, their proposals would be a good start -- IF they can get them past the fossil fuel corporations' bought-and-paid-for tools in Congress -- but they are only a start.
Emissions reduction
The emission reductions we truly need are from people like you, Secular Animist. You know nothing of me and yet choose to characterise me as an 'ill-informed crank' because I do not agree with your political position. I shouldn't complain too much--you libel and defame the character of three scientists whose work you obviously do not know and whose report you obviously have not read. However, as you have used the same language about me before, and obviously do not recall having done so, it is even more obvious that you are bloviating using the cut and paste method of showing what a fool you are.
"THREE senior Japanese scientists separately engaged in climate-change research have strongly questioned the validity of the man-made global-warming model that underpins the drive by the UN and most developed-nation governments to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
..."It could take 10 to 20 years more research to prove or disprove the theory of anthropogenic climate change, said Dr Kusano, a research group leader with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science's Earth Simulator project.
..."Dr Maruyama said yesterday there was widespread scepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century "is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations".
When this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, he said, "the result showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report".
..."The scientists and two others -- Seita Emori, of the National Institute of Environmental Studies, and Kiminori Ito, of Yokahama National University -- contributed to a paper titled "The scientific truth of global warming" that was published in January by the Japan Society of Energy and Resources.
Professor Emori is a firm supporter of man-made climate-change theory and Dr Ito is generally for it, although with reservations about the scientific rigour of the IPCC approach.
More emission reductions
Secular Animist, you say that when I write that temperatures have plateaued for a decade that is a 'blatant falsehood.' No, it is the truth, and even the BBC acknowledges it: "Temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world." Another study, released on Jan. 28 by Kyle L. Swanson and Anastasios A. Tsonis, who are professors in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, found that the Earth has been cooling since 2001 and projected that due to “global variation” the climate would continue to cool for the next 20 to 30 years.
You can say that they are wrong. You can say I am wrong. You can say that we are legally required to look at 5-year moving averages. You can say that a ten year period is irrelevant to the overall issue. But to say it is a blatant falsehood says more about you than it does about global warming, Japanese scientists, or me.
In your tired recitals of the facts above, nobody disputes 1 or 2. Many respected people not in the pay of energy companies and with scientific qualifications that might even equal your own do dispute number 3. Here are two:
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” If you want more than two, I am happy to provide them. Are these two ignorant, liars, or deceived by clever and evil people?
You claim the right to define what 'mainstream science' is. I don't think your comments makes the case that you deserve to have that right bestowed upon you. In fact, you seem very much like one of a couple of dozen people that flit from blog to blog, pasting the same garbage into the comments every time someone posts on a semi-related issue, and flaming anyone who doesn't agree with you.
You don't seem secular at all, Secular Animist. You seem very much like an acolyte of a new religion. Which is a bit tough when you're discussing science.
Secular Animist and JSTOR
In your original comment, you said that the "The Japanese organization JSTOR that produced that report is an energy-industry funded group."
I just hope people remember that if you ever try to comment on a scientific issue again...
"JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is a United States-based online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions."
Meaning that it's obvious that you cut and paste the same crap and just put in the name of whoever you think is publishing something that goes against your religion.
Tom Fuller wrote: "you say
Tom Fuller wrote: "you say that when I write that temperatures have plateaued for a decade that is a 'blatant falsehood.' No, it is the truth ... But to say it is a blatant falsehood says more about you than it does about global warming, Japanese scientists, or me."
Here's what I have to say about you: you are engaging in rote regurgitation of fake, phony, scripted, ExxonMobil-funded, pseudo-scientific denialist drivel.
You cite Ivar Giaever. According to Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute, the University of Oslo, and Google Scholar, Dr. Giaever has not published any work in the area of climate science. He has, in fact, NO background in climate science at all. You value his opinion above that of hundreds of climate scientists who have diligently studied the issue and subjected their findings to rigorous peer review in the relevant scientific journals for decades. Why?
And you grossly misrepresent the Swanson and Tsonis study. Here's what they actually conclude: "It is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing .... If the role of internal variability in the climate system is as large as this analysis would seem to suggest, warming over the 21st century may well be larger than that predicted by the current generation of models, given the propensity of those models to underestimate climate internal variability."
Why do you misrepresent their conclusions? Ignorance, or dishonesty?
According to the World Meteorological Organization, "The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Global temperatures for 2000-2008 now stand almost 0.2 degrees Centigrade warmer than the average for the decade 1990–1999."
Denialist BS artists like to use the year 1998 as a baseline because it was an extraordinarily warm year, due to a strong El Nino. That's called "cherry picking" and it is a form of deliberate fraud.
The only question about you is, have you been deceived by that fraud? Or are you deliberately, knowingly, dishonestly helping to perpetrate it?
In short, are you ignorant? Or are you a liar?
In either case, the discussion has long since moved on beyond the fake "controversy" about whether or not anthropogenic global warming is real, and whether it is dangerous. It is both real and dangerous. The adults are now talking about what to do about it. If you want to join the adult conversation, then you need to put aside your childish denial and get real.
Nocturnal emissions
Hi Secular Animist,
Thanks for pasting in another load of drivel. I am not regurgitating anything--this seems like a classic case of projection. (Who do you think JSTOR is again?)
Ivan Giaever is the Nobel Prize winner of Physics. That's Physics, Secular Animist. If you don't think that qualifies him to comment on computer modelling, then you know even less of physics than you do of global warming.
I don't grossly misrepresent the study--I quote it. (Must be strange for a serial cut and paster to understand that some people actually read the stuff they refer to.)
“The temperature has flattened and is actually going down,” Tsonis told CNSNews.com. “We are seeing a new shift towards cooler temperatures that will last for probably about three decades.” Tsonis did indeed later affirm his believe that this may be followed by further temperature increases.
But the point we were discussing was global temperatures from 1998-2009 and you accused me of lying because I said that temperatures had plateaued.
As for the World Meterological Organisation, "The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Niña would continue into the summer. This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory." Later, an email bullying campaign caused both Jarraud and the BBC to alter their statements... kind of like what you're trying to do here, right?
Only pasting pre-prepared crap into the comments section isn't going to get it done.
Paid Trolls
Secular Animist,
Does someone pay you to do this?
Tom Fuller, you have
Tom Fuller, you have demonstrated that you are dishonest and that you are only interested in wasting my time with what you well know is BS. Keep on posting your Ditto-Head "climate science according to Rush Limbaugh." Will it be Inhofe's fraudulent "list of 650 scientists" next? Or the big lie about "in the 1970s the scientific consensus was global cooling"? There's quite a long list of such bogus, scripted, ExxonMobil-funded talking points, and I'm sure you've got them all handy, ready to cut and paste.
Like I said, the legitimate, serious conversation now is about what to do about global warming, not whether or not it is occurring or whether or not it is caused by human activities. Those questions have been absolutely, definitively answered in the affirmative.
As long as you continue to deny that reality, whether because of obstinate, determined ignorance of the science (i.e. you are a crank), or through politically-motivated dishonesty (i.e. you are a fraud), you have nothing to offer the legitimate discussion about how to deal with global warming.
I have little tolerance for the sort of garbage you are posting here -- that's what leads me to respond to it. I have less tolerance for wasting my time "arguing" with blatantly, willfully ignorant and/or dishonest trolls who enjoy wasting people's time with BS -- that's what leads me to stop responding to you now.
Correction
daCascadian wrote: "One of the reasons we (the international community & governments) can`t do so is stuff like this."
I replied: "The Japanese organization JSTOR that produced that report is an energy-industry funded group -- they are NOT 'climate researchers'. "
I made an error in my reply. The Japanese organization that produced the report is not JSTOR, it is JSER, the Japan Society of Energy and Resources. JSTOR is a nonprofit organization that was commissioned to translate the JSER report by the UK newspaper The Register. I apologize for any confusion caused by this careless error.
According to the JSER website, it is "an academic society to promote the science and technology concerning energy and resources and thus to facilitate cooperation among industry academia and governmental sectors for coping with the problems in this field." According to The Register, JSER "acts as a government advisory panel."
JSER's executive directors include academics and energy industry officials, including the president of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum and "advisers" to the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, the Osaka Gas Corporation, the Osaka Gas Chemicals Corporation, and the Kansai Electric Power Corporation.
JSER neither conducts nor publishes peer-reviewed climate research. The organization is heavily funded by the Japanese energy industry and represents its interests as an "advisory group" to the Japanese government.
The JSER report being discussed here contains bizarre opinions -- e.g. that several decades of intensive study of anthropogenic global warming by hundreds of climate scientists representing every major relevant scientific body in the world has no more validity than "ancient astrology" -- and numerous flat-out falsehoods.
And of course, this report -- published by an energy industry group -- is being trumpeted by denialists everywhere as a refutation of the overwhelming consensus of the entire world's scientific community that anthropogenic global warming is both very real and very dangerous.