How It All Ends: Risk Management (pt 6 of 7)

[SSedmak]

You are assuming global government, which has risks in and of itself. Otherwise, we're stuck with at best a prisoner's dilemma. If the USA acts, and harms its economy (see previous comments on the credibility of the economists you talked to...) but China, Russia, and India do not act, then the risk of AGW is still not prevented, but the USA took the economic hit anyway.

[Iker888]

Would NASA count as a professional organization, as appears on your credibility chart?

[wonderingmind42]

@Iker888 Naw. At this point (I've greatly refined the process in my book "What's the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate") I'd classify it as a government agency, which is just below professional organization, for reasons explained in the book (cheap on Amazon! ;-)

[binkiie4dictator]

so in a nutshell, if we don't do anything regardless, we might as well re classify our species as a virus, for which the earth will find a way to brush us off her shoulder and carry on.

[snoopyflick]

I just hate how you compare worst case scenario, clearly the global destruction isn't how things should be distributed. House insurance doesn't assume if something bad happens to your house it must blows up.

[todioliver]

you are a genious.

I have seen most of your videos and am now getting as involved as i can in the climate debate. THank you, i show ure videos to loaaaads of people!!!

keep it up dude, ure one of the first guys ive lisnted to thats really made crystal clear logical conclusions.

[gazmaticc]

can someone download all these videos, in chronological order and make a dvd...

this stuff should be taught in schools

[zombiesbass]

I highly agree, a dvd would be very helpful

[alexkvaskov]

i am actually downloading all the videos in viewing order and will show them to my friends and family

[arch1190]

oh my bad you factored it in in the end. i didnt finish the video completely. ignore that.

[arch1190]

Wonderingmind, in the part where you discussed this special scenario in which you dont need numbers to decide in which column we'd rather be (in the chart), you forgot to include the positives of inaction and GCC not being true, and the economic harm of action when GCC is true. If those two numbers were 0 in your hypothetical calculation, then (probability of GCC being true)(magnitude of disaster)>(probability of GCC not being true)(magnitude of economic harm). but the real equation should be:

[DrummerTheWho]

Ha. I've been playing FInal Fantasy this whole time.

[alanschu14]

I can understand the idea of assuming the worst case scenario for both of the "bad situations."

The thing I don't like is by moving the "TRUE/FALSE line" up, you are implicitly also stating that the probability of the worst case scenario scales directly with it.

It seems to be a symptom of putting things into 4 finite positions, when a continuum is likely necessary. Of course, the 4 finite positions helps for clarity of your point.

[darkciti2]

Why is this not a formal documentary or DVD that I can buy?

I'm not used to watching videos on Youtube, and I keep picking up my TV remote to pause it and wondering why my remote doesn't work.

That is, until I feel like a nitwit because I need to use my mouse and not my remote.  ;)

Jokes aside, if this content were a DVD, I would buy it.

[iambored71717]

Ok. Its at this point where I speak up. Due to my lack of knowledge about everything in the big picture, I don't see why we can't just go for it. By that I mean, "left column". I relate carbon emissions to my old Boy Scout motto, "Leave no Trace." So when it comes to carbon emissions alone, the human race shouldn't produce anymore than any other species, leaving us out of the factor. Human causation for global warming is out of the picture and we have stronger and greener econ. in the long run.

[mjk4523]

as forest gump said it best "i got to pee" i HAVE to go pee to much beer

[geenbeen]

you pentagram is credible??? what the fuck man

[andreasBeaverhausen]

I have heard that when Al Gore made 'The Inconvenient Truth', some (about 4?) of the 30 or so? climate models ended in a 'runaway greenhouse effect'. When asked why he didn't mention this he said that there was too much scepticism and he felt that even the mention of R.A.G.E. was unacceptable.  Not to worry - if RAGE happens it just means we will have to run at an economic loss until we claw our way back from the brink. I believe planet Earth will be in R.A.G.E. for some decades before we...

[XurinSTINKTx]

I think he pretty much underestimated the lower right box. its not just catastrophe. It literally must be doom. A world war that really is a world war for resources and land. Everything in that world is possible and absolutely non-predictable and makes ww1 and ww2 look like a game of chess.

[Bigslye5]

The economic harm cost should be explained as two-fold: 1) before AGCC occurs and, 2) after it wreaks havoc on the world. This way, the expected value of the "take action column" has the same economic harm cost (before AGCC occurs) in both rows, and the expected value of the "don't take action" column also has the same economic harm cost in both rows, but a much different "wreak havoc" value. That's why including the economic harm from the upper left column to the lower right column is an error.

[wonderingmind42]

I think I follow you. But it seems to me that we can safely assume that the "wreak havoc" cost in the lower right would be necessarily larger than the "before AGCC cost" in the upper left, since whatever damage that we grant would arise from action taken with the time for debate (in upper left) would necessarily be greater if taken in a panic, compounded by the economic stress of natural disasters, so the bottom line EV analysis would hold. Thoughts?

[Bigslye5]

Agree 100%. The worst-case "wreak havoc" harm/cost would be 1000's times greater. Perhaps unmeasurable. Catastrophic. But the "take action" cost doesn't exist in the right hand column. That's all I was sayin'. I was wrong on one point: The "wreak havoc" economic harm does not exist in the upper right since that's the AGCC False box. I stated it exists in both rows of the right column. Just more support for your grid. There's only one place where havoc will be wreaked. Moving on to Manpollo.

[guffpot]

Sorry about the typo Tempest. ("Milankovich")

[guffpot]

Lack of reply from the scientific community is a cause for concern.

We can't explain what causes warming in the first 800 years (CO2 and temperature are heading in opposite directions). After that we postulate positive feedback (which wasn't effective in the first 800 years).

That's NOT conroversial? It is good enough for the AAAS et al, so we should just pretend it is proved?

[TempestStormwind]

"We can't explain what causes warming in the first 800 years" -- Yes, we can. Orbital forcings -- Milankovich cycles -- explain that temperature rise nigh-perfectly.

The lag was actually predicted and dealt with a decade before it was confirmed -- in a paper by Hansen, of all things.

Please, stop rehashing arguments that have been destroyed for years.

WM42 routinely cites Grist's How To Talk To A Climate Skeptic (tinyurl com/2rk2j2). If you can avoid those arguments, your credibility soars.

[guffpot]

Reference to proof of Milanivitch please?

p.s. it was never proved in the good old days when we were all in a flap over the next ice age.

[hess6wi]

Talk about missing the point: his entire argument is built on probability based on source credibility (AAAS etc.) and the consequences they suggest. For detailed science you need to read the sources he cites. This is youtube not a post-grad climate science course!

[guffpot]

No hess... Tempest claimed a link to Milankovitch here.

I want to understand why he believes there is a proof. Otherwise you have a lot of myth and misinformation being spread around. Is that not one of the things WM42 warns us about?

So come on then guys: proof of Milankovitch. Just show me where that assertion comes from and I'll understand you more.

Failing that - you lose the point (as WM42 says in one of the vids).

[hess6wi]

Sorry guff, but I'm refering to your orignal post i.e. "That's NOT conroversial? ...just pretend it is proved?"

The entire point is that it is not proved but to try to assign probability values to the truth falsehood part of the table.

By asking for scientific "proof" (which never comes in science - [I'm doing a Masters in Physics at the moment]) you are asking the impossible.

Can you see you're missing the point by asking for a proof rather than a probability?

[guffpot]

Point taken on "proof" (as in 100% certainty).

Rephrase - link to Milankovitch has never been established.

[tyrannischgott]

Guffpot, one of the underlying themes of these videos is that debating the finer points of climate change science is beyond the average schmo, and that the best way for us, the general population, to make a decision on the matter is to use basic risk management. I hold nothing against you personally and have no idea what your credentials are, but I have the entire NAS and AAAS saying that global climate change is real and it's our fault. Who am I supposed to trust?

[guffpot]

tyranischgott:

When something is important, I like to understand it. I can't do risk management without that.

I recommend the following paper for interesting reading: EPISTEME 2006, John Beatty, "Masking Disagreement among Experts". It's available on the internet.

Also have a look at a series of vids placed on YouTube by coyoteblog.

There is also an worthwhile presentation by climatologist John Christy on YouTube ("What the numbers say").

[ImperatorZor]

First off, a good work remark.

Second, i find it rather silly that the decenters will simply state there same old claims and Al Gore's conspiracy instead of actually responding to your challenge in providing peer reveiwed statements and such. You guys are not convincing anyone with your comments.

[HrricneGeorges]

Dear Wonderingmind42, I'd like to thank you for all the time(MY GOD you went for it didn't you?)LOL, you put into making your disaster scenario videos and conjecture videos on how to deal with it, personally the first video said enough for me to want to help and I hope we do pick the Best Case Scenario someday soon because the Worst Case may come faster than we like.. Thanks for your time and expertise..

HrricneGeorges

[senoirem]

The cost of LD quadrant can be thought to be the same as LU quadrant (it is the cost of our safety policy and it doesn't depend whether gcc is true or not). Let this cost be X. The total expectation value for Action A is now X.

The cost of RU quadrant can be set to 0 - no money spent. The cost of RD quadrant is Y. If p is the probability of bottom row, we now get that p*Y > X for action A to be better. If p is, say, 70%, then Y must be bigger than 1.43*X, abt.

[RoelGeurtsen]

In the built-up u stated u just made this up!

it doesn't take a rocket-scientist ,that i can do the same with the other side validying differtly ,also will i be more inclined to believe populair consensus(inc other fields of science) then politicised org. like AAAS NAS,these organisations are overfunded and will collapse if these predictions dont materialize!!

[TempestStormwind]

Correct, you can (and should!) come up with your own credibility spectrum.

The difference is that while credibility is subjective, it's not the same as "who I agree with". That's not rating credibility, it's confirmation bias.

By the way, what "popular consensus" are you referring to? And what about the statements of scientific organizations *with a vested interest in keeping oil flowing*, like the AGU and the AGU, GSA, and AAPG?

[RoelGeurtsen]

Although the media and politics,are joined in this crusade,i fail to sense massive anxiety,this may be different among students,

but the majority in Europa(liberal aswell)is rather annoyed than won for the cause!

[TempestStormwind]

What statistics are you using to cite "the majority" in Europe?

Furthermore, how does this follow from our earlier discussion?

[RoelGeurtsen]

I FAIL to SENSE MASSIVE anxiety,Believe me i dont need statistics to state this with confidence,I life there,but this can promptly change!!Starting with my homecountry The Netherlands,where millions of people life under sea-level.

[TempestStormwind]

Watch How It All Ends: The Nature of Science.

Common sense and intuition work well in their domain, but they're no substitute for actual research.

What you're suggesting is nothing short of truthiness -- the difference between thinking with your head and knowing with your gut, and all the numbers be damned but your gut won't change.

Doesn't that seem a bit problematic?

[TempestStormwind]

And on a related note, if I look up statistics on the Netherlands' public opinion on climate change, and they contradict your claim, what will you do?

Will you adjust your claim to account for new evidence?

Or will you insist that the numbers were fabricated by a great liberal conspiracy orchestrated by Al Gore and managed by every scientist and statistician in the world in the name of big government?

[iMaciscool]

great videos, thxs for putting them out

[Voice0fEnergy]

Nice hat.

[wonderingmind42]

Thanks. It's dead yak.

[Saintlyghost]

did u kill it your self and if so did u tape it lol