RoR: Forum

Though I have written about the so-called global "warming" several times in my blogs, I've never heard the word anthropogenic. But as to the nature of the phenomenon whatever it may be, I wrote in my January, 2009 blog:

The "inconvenient truth" Al Gore wanted us to believe, which some people still believe, in spite of the mounting evidence of record low temps, and in spite of science that says those carbons and other pollutants in the atmosphere are keeping out the sun rather than trapping it inside, must be his worst nightmare: the hell he predicted is not going to burn us after all. It may freeze some of us. We may be in a minor ice age even as I write.

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a new Ice Age," says the website Winningreen. "What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended."

This is a map of the "Ocean thermohaline conveyor system that transports warm, salty waters into the North Atlantic, tempering the climate of Northern Europe. If the conveyor should collapse on its return loop near Greenland and Iceland, Britain's climate could resemble Labrador."

"Now that the 1998 El Nino is disappearing off the 10 year scale, things are looking a bit different," says the website Alex Jones' Prison Planet. "Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades." [emphasis added]

I added: "The 10,000 year cycle of the interglacial period may end within our lifetimes. Civilizations in the northern hemispheres could be pushed into migrations toward warmer climates." Considering the record cold, snows, and wind chills, we may be closer than we think to that ice age."

In a later blog called Warming Down, or Chilling Up? , I began with this provocative statement:

Do we need to increase our footprints and warm up globally, to prevent record cold temps from arriving even faster?

I then closed with this:

If we are actually experiencing global warming while at the same time experiencing the onset of the next ice age, everything we do to prevent warming will cause us to freeze that much faster.

As regards nuclear reactors, I agree we need more, but maybe not the kind America has always used. I wrote that I read, in Wired Magazine, that the Chinese are building a different kind of nuclear reactor than American law allows for. These reactors are smaller, cheaper, easier to build, can be transported in sections and erected in series, as needed, to increase output when it becomes necessary. And the Chinese reactors are so safe that the "China Syndrome" can never happen.

"Physicists and engineers at Beijing's Tsinghua University have made the first great leap forward in a quarter century, building a new nuclear power facility that promises to be a better way to harness the atom: a pebble-bed reactor. A reactor small enough to be assembled from mass-produced parts and cheap enough for customers without billion-dollar bank accounts. A reactor whose safety is a matter of physics, not operator skill or reinforced concrete. And, for a bona fide fairy-tale ending, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is labeled hydrogen." Wired

I agree with the assessment in this article that we have been made afraid of the reactors we use. I don't believe there is any danger with them, but perhaps the pebble reactor are the way to go:

When mayors of Chinese cities and towns need more electricity for their citizens because of population growth and capitalist-style industrial growth, they call the manufacturers of these small reactors and order them! And when they need more power, they order another one to be put in line with the first one. This series can apparently go on for as much electricity is needed.

Post 1

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 9:39am

Interesting points, Curtis.

It is such terrible stain on the current culture of the United States of America that we have to rely on following communist China for better answers.

Ed

Post 2

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 11:21am

Though I have written about the so-called global "warming" several times in my blogs, I've never heard the word anthropogenic.

This is used quite frequently among global warming alarmists, and I think it's worth separating any potentially natural warming effect from a man-made warming effect.

But my main point is, IF there is a man made global warming effect at all, it is the fault of the very environmentalists who are now screaming about it, because they irrationally scared everyone to death about Nuclear Power.

Personally, I'm not convinced that global warming is occurring because the whole culture has every mark of a religious cult, the self re-enforcing scare mongering of the scientific elites involved in this, the fact that other REAL potential threats to civilization are being completely ignored, and the temperature data points are themselves questionable - check out my post on the temperature sensors, here some are placed right next to artificial heat sources! like this one, next to a trash burning barrel!

I then closed with this:

If we are actually experiencing global warming while at the same time experiencing the onset of the next ice age, everything we do to prevent warming will cause us to freeze that much faster.

Absolutely, and not only that, but all the proposed solutions to 'global warming' basically involve curtailing economic and industrial growth, the very things we need in abundance to combat REAL civilization level threats, like global pandemics or a large asteroid impact. But re: ice ages - I always say to people if you think a few extra feet of water are bad, try a mile of ICE covering New York City.

There are lots of different reactor technologies coming up, and the US light water reactors are some of the most inefficient. You could, in fact, build 2 or 3 fast breeder reactors that generate as much power as ALL of our nuclear reactors currently do all while using the exact same amount of fuel! But the ones being looked at heavily by India, and loosely by china, are of the self regulating breeders. You start with a small supply of conventional fissionable fuel, and it - through neutron radiation - breeds additionally fissionable fuel. For example, Uranium 235 is fissionable, but Uranium 238 is not. But if Uranium 238 absorbs a neutron, it decays into Plutonium 239, which is fissionable. Since U235 makes up about .5% of Uranium, it obviously makes a great deal of sense to create more fissionable uranium out of non fissionable uranium by absorbing the radiation you can't do anything with anyway! But Thorium can also be bred into a fissionable fuel, and there is about 4 times as much thorium in the world as there is uranium, and India has some of the worlds largest thorium reserves. The absorption of neutrons is highly temperature dependent though, and the slower a neutron goes, the more likely it is to be absorbed and to breed a new atom of fuel. So the brilliant things is these kinds of reactors are self regulating. The starter fuel creates additional fuel which then fissions and creates still more fuel, but if the temperature gets too hot, neutrons are not absorbed, and the reaction slows down. Conversely if it's too low, neutrons are more readily absorbed, it speeds up and heats up. These reactors could be made completely self regulating and run, un-monitored, for years, at a specific power output. China and India have designs that could be mass produced, they would be about the size of a truck and power a city for seven to ten years.

I've frankly given up on the US pulling itself out of this idiocy. China and India are going through their industrial revolution in one generation and they won't care about non-sensical environmental restrictions that the spoiled west brats with 10x as much per capital wealth fret about. We'll probably see China/India mass produce small reactors and the US will scramble whining and bitching all the way, probably make them illegal to buy, and deliver the final death blow to the US economy.

Post 3

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 12:04pm

It appears that my opinion on the existence of anthropogenic climate change, and the harm thereof, differs from that of the previous posters. Given my status of being borderline tolerated on this forum, I'm not certain if I should try getting into the whole debate, so I'll try just mentioning that I agree with the scientific consensus that climate change is happening, that it's significantly caused by human activity, and that it will likely cause large harmful effects. Oh, and I'm quite pro-nuclear-power.

This and This are the capstone of a set of rationalist essays on the topic that are much better written than I could manage myself. The RealClimate Wiki is also worth perusing, such as its page linking to articles about the reliability of instruments, and about whether scientists are really too stupid to notice and take into account such factors.

In short, I'll tend to believe the opinion of large numbers of well-educated people who've spent years analyzing the issue who have no real organized scientific opposition more than I will a random online poster who posted a funny picture.

But that's just me.

(Please continue your conversation, while I go back to reading your posts and trying to understand how you think, and generally lurking over in Dissent.)

Post 4

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 1:05pm

The "random online poster" is the same poster who posted the posting at the top that started all this posting in the first place. You're the random one here, not having read either of his pieces and thinking that the picture is "funny".

Post 5

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 1:21pm

Curtis,

The poster in question stated "I'm not convinced that global warming is occurring", and "all the proposed solutions to 'global warming' basically involve curtailing economic and industrial growth", which is mainly what I was trying to respond to. And I seem to have made a typographical mistake, in that I intended to write "'funny' picture" but only wrote "funny picture" instead. And yes, I've read the blog post that started this thread.

As I said in my post, I'm quite in favour of nuclear power. What the appropriate response to the environment is is an entirely separate question from what the environment is. One is a moral/political question; the other is a scientific one. There are many good reasons to promote nuclear power, even entirely aside from the issue of climate change; climate change simply makes nuclear power that much better an idea.

I apologize for my inclarity in my above post, and I hope that this post resolves the issue.

Post 6

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 1:46pm

It appears that my opinion on the existence of anthropogenic climate change, and the harm thereof, differs from that of the previous posters

Since CO2 *IS* a greenhouse gas, and we certainly ARE making alot of it, I do not put it outside the realm of possibility that a man made global warming effect is occurring. However it is extremely difficult to find reliable data given the cultural, scientific, philosophical and religious bias that exists in favor of global warming.

If it is occurring, it was caused by environmental alarmism which promulgated utterly irrational fears about nuclear power, which is the point of my post.

If it is occurring, it really doesn't matter, because it is the price we pay for industrial civilization. Some 50,000 people die in the US every year from traffic accidents, these would be completely avoided if we lowered speed limits to 5mph, yet we do not - why? Because we feel the benefits from higher speeds outweigh the cost of increased risks.

If you think AGW is a serious threat, I would like to know how you classify the other threats civilization faces, such as a caldera volcano eruption, an asteroid impact, a nearby supernovae, a rogue planet creating a gravitational destabilization, a global viral pandemic, a nuclear terrorist attack, runaway artificial intelligence, runaway nanotechnology, genetically engineered viruses, artificial genetically engineered life forms, etc. etc.

I am a board member of the Lifeboat Foundation, whose explicit goal is to identify all existential threats humanity faces as then to establish coherent strategies to attempt to mitigate the risks from those. We have over 500 scientists and intellectuals on our advisory boards, an informal poll which attempted to rank the threats we face in order of priority listed "Global Warming" as SECOND TO LAST. LAST was "turning off the simulation"

If you pretend to concern yourself with threats civilizations face, then you should be damn well aware of ALL the threats and be able to intelligently rank them, and defend your ranking system. You should also have an answer to the Fermi paradox and be able to coherently defend your answer.

Take, for example, a caldera volcano eruption. These are not your typical volcanos. These volcanos are holes in the earths crust where the magma of the outer mantle bulges through, the earth's continental plates drift past these spots but the spots never move. The last time one erupted was in Indonesia about 70,000 years ago, and at that same time the human population experienced a significant bottleneck which saw the entire population reduced to a few thousand adults. That volcanic eruption almost wiped out humanity. These volcanic eruptions are thousands to millions of times stronger than the largest typical volcanos.

Yellowstone national park is one of these, it has erupted like clockwork every 600,000 years for a few tens of millions of years, leaving a pockmark of scars across the US continental plate as it moves past the hot spot. The last time it erupted was 660,000 years ago, it is long over due. Maybe it's dead, maybe it's about to blow. We have no idea.

The last time Yellowstone erupted it covered almost all of America in a meter of Ash. I ask you to imagine what that would do to the US if it happened tomorrow, and then what that would do to the global economy. Consider the US supplies about 1/2 of the worlds food supply and about 2/3rds of it's grain supply.

There are 3 or 4 for these volcanos under continental land masses that have scars proving their existence. It is reasonable that the same distributions of these exists under continental plates that are buried under water, unfortunately they do not leave any evidence. Imagine one erupting, displacing about a thousand cubic miles of material, underwater, and consider the ensuing tsunami would hit every coastal city with hundreds of feet of water across half the globe.

Oh, but we need to cap carbon emissions!

In order to combat all the threats humanity faces we need rapid and massive economic and industrial growth. In order to combat global warming we need rapid and massive industrial curtailment. So of all the problems we face, only ONE demands abandoning technology and industry, and global warming is NOT even a civilization threat. A few feet of water rise WILL NOT end human civilization.

Furthermore, even IPCC estimates suggest only a few feet of water level rise in about one hundred years. The Kyoto protocol would cost some 100 trillion dollars and achieve only a 1 - 2 degree temperature decrease. Meanwhile, allegedly, 400 million people will be displaced by a water level rise of the 80cms the IPCC suggests. To prevent global warming all together (not just slow it) some thing akin to 5 to 10x the Koyoto level restrictions are necessary, which of course amounts to 500 trillion to one quadrillion dollars. For this price, you could give every single individual displaced by water level rise one million dollars to find a new home.

Global Warming might be a real issue, but the point is that it is irrelevant in the face of poverty, disease, malaria, murderous dictatorships, and the overwhelming standard of living increase the even rudimentary industrialization enables.

The "funny picture" is from www.surfacestations.org, which is a volunteer site that is auditing the surface temperature monitors. A disturbingly large number of them are placed next to artificial man made heat sources, such as exhaust vents on air conditioners or in the case above literally within five feet of a trash burning barrel. The few monitors which are well placed show temperature declines, the majority of monitors show temperature increases.

Post 7

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 1:54pm

Yes, build more nukes. Thanks for the data, Michael.

I helped to build the last US nuke. I�m pleased to say it is still putting megawatts on the grid 21 years later.

My company is poised to create more, and to that end it is pulling for the U.S. Senate to pass �comprehensive climate change and clean energy legislation.� Nuclear power is good base-load electricity, which can well supply the nighttime recharging of electric plug-in vehicles on the way.

Post 8

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 2:09pm

In short, I'll tend to believe the opinion of large numbers of well-educated people who've spent years analyzing the issue who have no real organized scientific opposition more than I will a random online poster who posted a funny picture.

The same people, generally, whose livelyhood depends on a scared public to continue their scientific funding. Oh, but they are just 'dis-interested citizens' right?

Consensus is irrelevant in science and when the evidence is clear, no appeals to consensus are necessary. I just picked up "How We Invented the Airplane" written by Orville Wright. He points out that many prominent physicists had 'proved' powered heavier than air flight was impossible, or worked on the problem and failed. These eminent scientists and inventors such as Da Vinci, Sir George Cayley (one of the first internal combustion engine inventors) Sir Hiram Maxim, PArsons, the inventor of the turbine steam engine, Alexander Graham Bell, Hiratio Phillips (well known engineer) Otto Llienthal (another well known engineer) Thomas Edison, Dr. S. P> Langley (head of smithosian institute) Guy Lussac, Simon Newcomb (who attempted to prove such a craft was impossible) Admiral Melville, chief engineer of the US Navy. In this culture, which Orville writes, the likelyhood of a heavier than air flying machine was as good as a perpetual motion machine.

The "Consensus" by, as you say, 'large numbers of well-educated people who've spent years analyzing the issue' was that flight was utterly impossible. The same has been true of virtually every major innovation. "Consensus" is not a proper word in science, we do not determine the truth through voting, we determine it through rigorous standards of analysis and replication.

Post 9

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 3:11pm

Stephen, you wrote: My company is poised to create more, and to that end it is pulling for the U.S. Senate to pass �comprehensive climate change and clean energy legislation.�

As an Objectivist, (or maybe you are not?) what are you rooting for?

Post 10

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 3:27pm

"of well-educated people who've spent years analyzing the issue"

Imagine the world today if only Gore had thought the same about his well-educated mentor on the topic, Revelle.

But, how does Revelle, spending his entire adult life 'analyzing the issue' -- and reaching his well educated if politically embarrassing conclusions -- possibly compare with the inspirational Mr. Love Story once 'taking a course' ... with Revelle?

Surely, how can anything like that stand up in the face of the IPCCs list of 1500 most influential hollywood jewelry designers and so on?

Post 11

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:23pm

hmmm, let me think. IPCC, that sounds familiar. Isn't that the partisan UN group that published the data that those politically motivated, pretend scientist fellows cooked, manipulated, tweaked and so forth? Things like the hockey stick chart that was a lie. Things like destroying data that didn't agree with preconceived political goals? Things like rigging the game so that peer-reviewed articles weren't reviewed if they didn't have the same preconceived political bias? That IPCC?

Post 12

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 8:25pm

Comprehensive climate change and clean energy legislation?

How about comprehensive energy deregulation?

In one fell swoop America would rocket to recovery, put the oil dictatorships we subsidize out of business, thus guarantee the defeat of the homo-killing jihadis, provide negative unemployment, pay off the national debt � now 41,333 per person in the US, add ten years to the average US lifespan, and provide enough capital to wire the US wall-to-wall with broadband, leaving enough to spare to colonize mars and send missions to Europa, Titan, and the nearest promising exoplanetary system. And your company is rooting for special privileges?

Post 13

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 9:44pm

Mr. Clark,

I have always been in favor of more nuclear power generation in the US. There is, however, no such thing as a uniquely correct Objectivist position on that question.

I am retired now, but from my experience in the industry, I have good confidence in the safe operation of our plants, both private and governmental, as well as in the public-safety oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When I was a child in the 1950's, it was being debated whether nuclear power should be brought to America entirely under operation of the government. It has worked out pretty well with the private commercial operations, although in my experience on the private side, I surely could not help but notice how valuable to us were the personnel we get from the nuclear Navy when they leave the service. They have fantastic training.

I don't know the particulars of the legislative proposals at this time. My study time goes to other things, and that is the way it will be, although (like this evening, for old-man problems) we sometimes have to get me to the emergency room. I'll resume work tomorrow on my philosophy piece for Mr. Keele, concerning Kant, Aristotle, and Rand. I am slow, but persistent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS

Mention of growing up in the 50�s reminded me of what we thought back then about the future of technology. My brother and I thought that everything would become powered. All doors would slide open with the touch of a button. Devices would have their own power source installed in them. You would not need generating stations. Those little power sources would be nuclear or something like that. Cars, locomotives, and aircraft would have nuclear engines. There would be a narrow suction vent running along the baseboard in all rooms of a house; just press a button, and the floors have been vacuumed. �Those boys, what will they think of next?�

From the Air Force personnel who would come to our house, we children heard the visions of beam-weapon systems. They called it Buck Rogers stuff. Many years later, it was called Star Wars stuff.

At the �Arrows to Atoms� exhibition in 1957 at the State Fairgrounds, there was a big tent where there was a live show called something like �The Home of Tomorrow.� I think it was put on by Westinghouse, maybe Raytheon. The housewife put a cake into an oven. A few seconds later, she opened the oven door, and there you have it, a baked cake. One thing after another, much laughter. (Our city was originally an oil boomtown; there was an oil derrick just outside the front door of the high school I would later attend. One souvenir from the exhibition was a card with a circle and a spinner affixed in the center. The circle area was partitioned by colored sections reflecting your chances for what you would get in drilling for oil. You had a reasonable chance of getting some natural gas, but actually getting oil was a slender chance. Good information to the public; and a fascinating toy.)

While still in grade school, my brother told our Grandpa out at the farm (a, b) that someday man would travel to the moon. Grandpa said no, it can�t be done, and anyway the Lord meant for man to be on Earth. Then John Kennedy made his speech (inaugural?) in which he talked for nuclear power and proposed sending a man to the moon. Grandpa lived to see the child had gotten that one right. What changes�from kerosene lanterns and mules to electric lights, television, and tractors. And now this.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 1/11, 6:52am)

Post 14

Monday, January 11, 2010 - 6:51am

Stephen, my question was not about whether you support nuclear power. I presumed you do. You said your company wants

"�comprehensive climate change and clean energy legislation.�

I asked what you wanted. I think Ted exagerates (just a little bit) with all we could do if energy legislation was de-regulated, but he is correct about what is not exagerated. If you take the position of your company, you then do not support de-regulation but rather more of it.

So I ask again: Which political position do you, as an Objectivist take, considering that you bothered to tell us what your company supports?

Post 15

Monday, January 11, 2010 - 6:53am

Steve:

Have you noticed that Mr. Hockey Stick bounced from UVA to Penn State...and is now under investigation there for his role in ClimateGate?

I'd love to know the particulars of how and why Mr. Fudge The Data left and/or was asked to leave Mr. Jefferson's University.

Post 16

Monday, January 11, 2010 - 7:36am

Curtis,

I do not know what new regulation or deregulation is being proposed. (I have no obligation to spend my time learning those things, as opposed to other things, nor figuring out how I would vote were I a Senator.) I certainly would not support deregulation that involved abolition of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The key concept of Objectivist political philosophy is individual rights, not deregulation and not minimal government. From the basis that the proper function of government is to protect individual rights, there can be reasonable disagreement about particular legal structures. There is no need to characterize only one branch out each node of a decision tree as a distinctively Objectivist branch. I remember in the 70's when I was active in the Libertarian Party, we had a plank in our platform that called for repeal of the Price-Anderson act, which limited liability from nuclear accidents. Perhaps there is a clear step-by-step case to be made from the function of protecting individual rights to the conclusion that there should be no limits on liabilities in torts. I never saw any such successful demonstration.

Want to know how much the political discussions on a website are really about distinctively Objectivist politics? See how much the issues are expressly connected to the concept of individual rights.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Wow, the social grace. I just told you folks I had to go to the emergency room last night. No well-wishes. Even worse, this one. It simply sat there in deafening silence. Nothing from anyone.)
(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 1/11, 9:06am)

Post 17

Monday, January 11, 2010 - 10:16am

Stephen,
I confess that I didn't read your post carefully enough to catch the fact that you were going to the ER last night. I give myself a C in reading comprehension. Perhaps a belated show of concern is better than none. I hope things went well and that you don't have to go again for a long time.
Best,
Glenn

Post 18

Monday, January 11, 2010 - 10:45am

Stephen:

I blew by that, too. My apologies. I hope things went well, and you are on the mend, now.

Don't despair getting older, it beats the alternative. We are all either going to live forever, or die valiantly in the attempt. We all get to borrow this animated stardust for a short while, shake it as best we can while we can with that mote of heat and light that we are given for it, and then hand it off to the next lucky riders. Still, I hope you get to yell 'yahoooooo!' the whole way, in whatever manner you choose. The best we can hope for is that our last thought is 'Thank you,' even if just to the ancient furnaces of all those stars.

What was your experience like in the ER?

regards,
Fred

Post 19

Monday, January 11, 2010 - 11:11am