Evaluative premises | Climate Etc.

JC comment:  With regards to “This alone shows that global warmists are biased.”  Back in 1992, the UNFCCC framed the entire issue of AGW in the context of dangerous climate change, which evolved into a charge for the IPCC (WGII) to identify the dangerous impacts.  The NIPCC countered by focusing on positive impacts.  I’ve stated before that the the UNFCCC put the policy cart before the scientific horse; recall that the conclusion from the IPCC FAR in 1990 was:  “The size of this warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability.”

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JC comment:  Scientists working on the IPCC have been working under the charge of the UNFCCC, convinced that they were doing the right thing and responding to issues of concern to the policy makers.  This framed the climate problem too narrowly:  natural internal climate variability (multi-decadal and longer) and benefits of a warmer climate were not considered in a serious way.  Science for policy IPCC-style has resulted in epistemic slippage (Mike Hulme’s phrase); I wouldn’t call this fraud.

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JC conclusion:  Burgess-Jackson clarifies a primary flaw in the warming to mitigation argument:  the absence of evaluative premises, beyond a prima facie assumption that warming is dangerous. This article leads us to ask the following questions.  What are the appropriate evaluative premises for assessing the good versus bad consequences of AGW?  Economic?  Social justice?  As per the Morgan paper discussed in the previous thread, expected utility isn’t a very useful concept here.  Good versus bad is regional, in terms of regional variations in climate change, regional vulnerabilities, and local cultural and political values.  When considering a unilateral global response to AGW such as CO2 stabilization, how do you weight these various factors?  As I argued in my testimony, climate models predict more rainfall in South and Central Asia, where half of the global population lives, with all of these countries (except for Bangladesh) having major concerns about their future water supply.  This is one example of a major benefit for half of the world’s population.  Etc.

Man To Sail Around World To Decrease Awareness Of Important Issues | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

The utterly irrelevant boat ride, which Gilmer plans to document by video so that people can oc-cupy precious hours of their time watching clips of a self-satisfied little shit in a cramped sailboat cabin as if it were an actual event of significance, will in no way address climate change, ocean conservation, unemployment, workers' rights, cancer research, or any wars or conflicts anywhere in the world.

Michael Mann a conservative? | JunkScience.com

But take a look at Mann’s political contributions for 2008-2010. They hardly amount to evidence of being a conservative.

DYER: Was 2011 a turning point year?

And so to the really bad news. The Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than even the pessimists feared, massive floods are devastating huge areas (Pakistan, Thailand, Australia), and sea level is rising at twice the predicted speed, but nothing will be done about it for the next 10 years. That, effectively, was the decision ---- or rather, the non-decision ---- taken at the annual climate change summit in Durban in December....By 2020 it will probably be impossible to prevent the rise in average global temperature from exceeding 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), which is generally agreed to be the point of no return. After that, we will probably find ourselves in a new world of runaway warming. We know it, and yet we do nothing.