Climate Scientists Hacked - Page 11

On November 24 2009 12:23 L wrote:
I quoted you saying there is 'no' incentive. Not an incentive working in reverse or an overall incentive if performing under ideal conditions. Your statement was pretty clear.

There ARE many incentives against doing so, but they're rather inferior to the incentive of getting rather rich, rather quickly with very little liability attached. Commodity production in most first world nations have taken a plunge (see montana mining industry, for instance) because once the costs attached to resource extraction are fully internalized (cleanup and detox in the case of mining), most companies simply can't turn a profit. Even in cases where companies can turn a profit, they can turn larger profits by skipping out on any liabilities they have.

Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen.

On November 26 2009 02:48 L wrote:Haiti has people trying to practice subsistence agriculture on areas deemed approximately a hundredfold smaller than equivalent american sizes. Haiti also has a massive diaspora because people simply can't live at home, and a huge amount of Haiti's finances come from expatriate cash.

No, it can't support itself.

Maybe it could at one time prior to the deforestation of their half of Hispaniola, but that's rather in the past now. Soils are now heavily eroded, overfarmed and very susceptible to natural disasters because of the lack of windbreaks and natural water holding capacities that forests normally bring.

On November 25 2009 11:02 L wrote:
No it isn't. There's nothing suggesting that the rulers of the anasazi or multiple polynesian islands were 'corrupt'. There's nothing suggesting that the death of the vikings in Greenland was more attributable to 'corrupt' leadership than their unwillingness to learn how the fuck to fish. Haiti's problems FAR predated Duvalier's government; the period in which they were doing best economically is when they were a french Caribbean colony, where they were rather spectacularly wealthy from the proceeds of plantations and agriculture. The civilization that built angkor wat failed because of water management problems. The Maya failed directly because they chopped down forests to get more arable land, but losing tree cover reduced the fertility of the soil which turned a seasonal drought into a continent wide mega drought (In the leading interpretation, at least). Is that corruption's fault? No. Some people had poor judgement or couldn't react quickly enough to a massive problem. They either didn't have the tools, foresight or motivation to deal with something.

On November 25 2009 11:02 L wrote:
No i'm not. Tort litigation is an incredibly poor method of redistributing assets; most litigants simply can't afford the costs of court in the first place, and the majority make back far less than the value they lost leading to the claim. Tort litigation's main success lies in its preventive effect, which doesn't apply in the majority of countries with corrupt and non-independent judiciaries, since those who are profiting can pay off the judges themselves. Additionally, tort law doesn't dissuade equally for all risks. For instance; Dissuading businesses against protecting against risks which are far too large for them to pay off in the first place doesn't work. In the case of mining, a mining company with assets worth, lets say, 20 million is going to be dissuaded to the tune of 20 million regarding an accident which might cost anywhere from 20 million to 500 million, because the result of any of those accidents happening is simply bankruptcy.

On November 27 2009 04:43 Piretes wrote:
I've read through alot of you two's arguments, and I must say, I actually liked some of the banter. Up till the point where TanGeng clearly got irritated at the failure to drag L into a political/economic debate, while L kept on the ecological/sociological track.

Now again, in your recent post, TanGeng, you try to bring economics and politics into a thread about ecological science. It's not really a good debate like this.

Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation property rights was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen.
FIFY
Pollution of neighboring lands or public lands is an issue of property rights. More on this later.

Your competency is highly concentrated in how using green techniques is the proper way to use the land. I'll applaud you for that. But then you throw in how regulations are the way to go. In those statements you have given very little in terms of supporting evidence.

In the case of VIkings and Mayans, there was a natural shift away in climate. You're saying that they could have mitigated the consequences? The cold spell for the Vikings made Greenland largely uninhabitable. The dry spell for the Mayans created a drought all the way through Mexico and hit the southwest United Sates.

This problem right here cannot be solved by regulations, either. Regulations swing between the extreme of being too friendly to the mining company or making resource extraction prohibitive.

Haiti's problem isn't of population density. While for all of China is pop. density is 1/3 of Haiti, the eastern half is about 90% of Haiti in concentration and is largely self-sufficient. The China case is rather complicated so I can expound more on it necessary, but basically the idea is that China had more trouble supporting its 900 million in the 1960 than it does the 1.3 tr1illion in the present. It would tax the system, but the 1.7 trillion with one-child policy would not be a problem. The one-child policy has also produced a looming social problem of too many guys and too few girls.

Back to Haiti. Looking at Haiti, the consistent deforestation is due to charcoal producers who raid public or private lands, burn down the forest, and harvest the charcoal. This is a clear violation of property rights. They are criminals stopping them would be step one. Haitians are trying to do it to the Dominican Republic. The DR should stop them. This is not an issue of one government or another in Haiti, but a consistent lack of proper stewardship of property.

On November 27 2009 09:56 L wrote:
What is my competency, exactly? Do you know what my formation is? Regardless, aren't you the one that has an issue with supporting evidence?

Additionally doesn't the grant of competency mean you've completely ceded the historical argument, and thus the entire point to me, granted that you have no supporting evidence of your own and that my argument is limited to the existence of a problem, not a method with which to solve it?
So lets go back to the important points;

On November 27 2009 09:56 L wrote:
In the case of both the vikings and the mayans, a number of things happened, however, looking around them, there were viable societies that survived. The inuit lived further north and fed a population 3 times the size the vikings had using an economy based on whale fishing and seal hunting. The vikings additionally failed to establish a settlement in 'vinland' or north america despite having regular trips there.
They could have mitigated the consequences? They sure could have. Others in the area did and survived just fine; they didn't and they died.

The mayans, again weren't the only civilization in the area. Pueblo culture had far more advanced water management techniques, lived in drier areas and they survived through that and many other disasters; the drought itself was massively worsened because they cleared a huge amount of forest cover away. What's more, the mayans didn't just fail as a society; they vanished. When their society collapsed no one stayed in the area because they had made it so arid and inhospitable. Typically a disaster is what tips a society over the edge; the sudden drop in available resources results in social uprisings and the disintegration of institutions, which makes things worse still.

Pueblo culture was always being beaten down by the elements, so they never really grew beyond their means. The mayans, however, were able to artificially delay any negative effects of their deforestation practices by deforesting MORE. The result of this cycle, wherein deforestation gave ground for agriculture, which supported more people, which accelerated deforestation, was unsustainable from the start. That a drought pushed them over the edge is simply the result of poor practices beforehand.

On November 27 2009 09:56 L wrote:
So? It doesnt' change the fact that there's a problem there.

Your solution, similarly, doesn't work; either the policy has premiums which are too high, or the local residents are entitled to compensation that is too low. In the case of tainted aquifer water for instance, the amount of insured might be up to tens of millions. Another issue is that of notification in mass or class actions, which is one of the costliest points of the process.
The most important element, however, for society-scale resource issues is that the problem's roots become known on a wide scale. Without an honest debate in society, no shifting of mores will occur and there will be rather little incentive for private or public actors to change their behavior.

On November 27 2009 09:56 L wrote:


You're comparing the relatively urban coast of china to a nearly completely rural area that relies on subsistence farming. Why wouldn't you compare the equally rural areas in west china? Oh, because if you take the population densities there, the number drops drastically and the problem makes itself obvious? China was actually one of the first large agricultural innovators because of population stresses; they developed rice/fish combination culturing, wherein the growing fish in rice paddies allows for natural fertilization and vastly increase protein yields which allowed more people to survive in a given area.

Why not compare Hong Kong specifically? Density there is around 6000 people/km^2. Could it be that trying to use a completely urban zone would be a horrendous modelling tool? Yes it would.

On November 27 2009 09:56 L wrote:

But on this point, there's more; There are externalities to urban areas; they draw resources in from outside regions in order to sustain themselves; if those areas of plenty didn't exist, how would cities be able to pack people into small areas?

They wouldn't.

In fact, this is where things get cute. Remember Haiti? Haiti's main source of heating fuel and fire is charcoal. The demand for charcoal largely claim from Haiti's urban capital. The incentive to burn down forests across Hispaniola is fueled by the lack of resources to sustain their population in high density areas, the exact end solution that you're proposing by attempting to model them after china.
This explains why foreign resources are in such high demand; because domestic resources and land simply don't cut it.

Just the science and the technologies of resource management – that with the present technologies, they can’t support their population. Very excellent science. It states very clearly that a problem exists.

You rarely discuss how the decision to protect the environment should be made. From what I can tell you only care that the decision is made. The solutions you propose aren't appealing to the people and then you blame the people for rejecting it. Your solutions are, of course, perfect. It's the people that must be flawed.

I am not for recovering damage through tort but through contractual loss claims. The solution that I posed is using insurance where landholders in the area of possible impact get the mining company in question to buy insurance for unlimited losses in cases of ecological disaster.

I guess I’ll go into depth on China now.

China should only be compared against itself because no other country can match the wet rice agriculture in the South, the mineral deposits in a few of the mountain regions, and the oil of the South China Sea.

Here is one of the major drivers of deforestation on Haiti. They face an energy shortage, specifically lack of indoor cooking fuel. The shortage drives the current population to despoil the forest for the charcoal they need to survive. As long as the energy shortage is not addressed, planting trees will do nothing in Haiti. They will be cut as fast as they are being planted.

If and when they get out from their energy shortage, Haiti should look closer to home and model their economy on the Dominican Republic.

Come on. This is selective quoting. Omitted was the question "Could they have predicted such shifts?"

There were quite a few other cultures that vanished with climate changes in 14th century. Hohokam and the Mogollon tribes in US and Mexico disappeared completely. They were dependent on several rivers for their irrigation system, and when those changed and failed, their civilization failed. Their civilization died just like the Mayans.

Rise and failure of these civilizations has a lot to do with luck. The civilizations develop specialization in certain uses of the land and placed their bets accordingly. Sometimes they make the assumption that their climate will always stay the same. It is a very silly assumption to make, but usually it works until something goes awfully wrong. Luck! From these cases, the lesson is that it is wise to hedge, but luck is involved in having the right hedges at the right time.

Had the environment shifts headed in the opposite direction, wet spells for Mayan culture and warm spell for Vikings, we would be discussing a different history right now. Mayan might still be in ruins because of their faulty agricultural methods, but the Vikings could have taken over North America if they wanted to venture so far from their homeland. This is the benefit of hindsight. Everything seems to have so much clarity.

Is that corruption's fault? No. Some people had poor judgement or couldn't react quickly enough to a massive problem. They either didn't have the tools, foresight or motivation to deal with something.

Had the environment shifts headed in the opposite direction, wet spells for Mayan culture and warm spell for Vikings, we would be discussing a different history right now.

On November 28 2009 17:31 L wrote:
I blamed people? I explicitly said otherwise in multiple portions of my arguments. Moreover, you think i'm proposing solutions when you admit I've not bothered to do so.

More importantly, my competency is "the science and technologies of resource management"? No, that's the subject that i'm talking about. That you suppose that I am competent in the matter is very flattering, though.

1) And if.. they don't? What then? How do 'landowners' force another 'landowner' to do something with their land? The only way they can is by asking for an injunction (which they likely won't get, and which won't come in time, anyways), or they can file after the damage is done in nuisance or the tort of Rylands v Fletcher. Government intervention? That's exactly what your ideological bent is trying to get rid of. so that's out of the picture. Either way, you're going to be traipsing on someone's private property to attempt to help out the masses.

2) What's the contractual tie between the mining company and the 'landowners'? There are none. Insurance of this type involves tort claims against the mining company which are then handled by the insurance company. The only case in which this makes rational sense is if there's something akin to a contract for exploitation of the land itself written by a government or massive local landowner. Even then, all those who aren't in the contract need to file in tort.

You also need an insurance company stupid enough to try and insure a company that, by the nature of the business, is likely to fold after their mining operations are done in the first place. Good luck there.

Contracts law, in its ability to 'solve' these problems has the exact same problems tort law has, but has the added incentive of making the company far more likely to actually have one of these faults happen in the first place because of the information asymmetry between the insurance company and the mining operator.

So yeah, its not a 'well developed solution' because it doesn't work. If it worked, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

No need, I know the demographics and distributions. But if you insist on going through and then making statements like:

which completely decimates your position, go ahead. You're the one that compared china to haiti to claim that population density couldn't possibly be the issue; yet you readily admit that china has very, very robust agriculture, which can support said density (despite the fact that its clearly not the same). Even then, your talk about demographics is pretty telling; where are the main population centers in china? They sure aren't in the arid deserts or the tibetan plateau. Could it be that the development of populations in these areas has typically been held back because there simply hasn't been enough arable land to support said populations? Sure, why not! Tibet has such an incredible soil scarcity that instead of burying their dead in the ground, their bodies are chopped up and minced, then rolled into bread/bone/flesh balls and left for vultures to eat. Sky burial.

But you're left at Haiti's problems all over again; The china/haiti link we have was made by you to state that Haiti is NOT overpopulated. Try to keep your comparisons for that purpose, because they were your idea, not mine. You also aren't cognizant that my suggestion is actually being effected through mass emigration in Haiti anyways and government policies in china. The only difference between the two is that now all of the host countries have to deal with the resultant fallout of Haiti's problems, whereas China's cleaned up their own mess.

You also make a few claims in there with are relatively ideological and unsupported, but that's pretty common of your posts.

Energy is a resource. You've basically restated my claims and agree with me. Well done on coming over.

There are a number of other pilot projects in the making, including the use of solar cookers to reduce the requirement of charcoal; either way, they represent an initiative to reduce the consumption of resources because the current levels found in their country are not sufficient. India's poorer areas are actually undergoing the exact same grassroots energy issues, and are responding in roughly equivalent manners; there is a project which currently leases out solar panels to power 2 light bulbs so that textile workers can sew at home into the evening, and so that kids can study after sundown.

They probably shouldn't, because the DR is doing relatively poorly, just not in comparison to the poorest country in the hemisphere.

I left this for last because I think its important to examine what this is a response to:

You claimed the real reason I was talking about resource scarcity was corruption. I said no, there's no evidence of that. You retorted, for some reason, that the vikings and mayans were undone by climate and nothing else. I said that wasn't true.

At the start of this post, you complain that I didn't address the 'prediction' of climate shifts. I did. You simply don't remember why you're arguing the point. I specifically said, in the exact same line of responses the following bit:



Next; now you're on about luck. I've already stated that an unfortunate event can tip a society that's teetering over the edge; that isn't luck. Easter island provides a pretty open and shut non-luck example; they just chopped all their trees down. The vikings set themselves up to fail in so many ways its unreal; they spent the majority of their scarce shipping space buying non-essential luxuries. they made war with both the inuit and the native americans. they refused to fish. they raised animals which were completely inappropriate for the soil conditions they had. These aren't 'luck' they were bad choices. The mayans similarly wouldn't have been wiped out by a drought if they hadn't done everything in their power to make it fatal to themselves.

Probably not; the vikings had run out of iron for their tools and couldn't defend themselves against the inuit without them. They had also degraded the soil in the majority of their farmland because of their choice of animals. The cold wasn't a determining factor at all. The mayans would have died off regardless during the next drought, seeing as they occur on relatively regular intervals; again when the empire fell, people didn't stick around. They made the land arid.

On February 16 2010 18:02 fight_or_flight wrote:
A lot of stuff has happened since those emails were released.

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

On February 16 2010 18:54 JacobDaKung wrote:


You are wrong, there has been no change of temperature because of the El nino that was warming the globe in mid 90-is and La nina that was cooling the globe for the mid 00-is. The fact that the temperature was essentially the same a sign for that the temperature is rising since, el nino and la nina cycles are supposed to give warmth and cooling periods.

After this you cite a lot of newspapers etc, that has NO merit in a science debate.

On February 16 2010 19:03 fight_or_flight wrote:

Those cycles alternate every couple of years, they aren't 15 year trends.

Also, what about the possibility that global temperature where warmer in the medieval period? I think that is pretty new as well.

On February 16 2010 19:06 JacobDaKung wrote:

source?