The Urge to Explore

Shawn Wilson wrote:
"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
.. .

What you CAN'T cite is a cost-benefit analysis supporting the notion that
money should be spent to reduce CO2 emissions.

Of course not. Because doing so would be an attempt to prophesize
the future of events we cannot precisely predict.



Which is, of course, what you're doing already in claiming future global
warming...



We can put various statistical bounds around the likely futures,
and attach reasonable cost estimates to those, and create a
cost-benefits envelope. But that's not an analysis, which presumes
actual hard numbers to work with.


It's called an 'estimate'...

We know ALL ABOUT uncertainty, economist kinda invented information
economics...



Naive cost-benefits analysies are the wrong tool.


Cost-benefit analysis is ALWAYS the right tool for public policy.



Given the high levels of uncertainty in all of the relevant factors, a
"regret" formulation would be more useful.



Sure, if you want a certain public policy that cost-benefit analysis won't
support...

Yeah, 'cause that would stand out amongst current public policies like
a stalk of grass in a haystack.

Mike Schilling wrote:

Does anyone believe that Shawn's really an economist?

He's may not be very good at economic thought, but at least
he's very economical with his thinking.

Paul

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Mike Schilling wrote:

Does anyone believe that Shawn's really an economist?

He's may not be very good at economic thought, but at least
he's very economical with his thinking.

I had just put down my 7-Up, or you'd owe me a new keyboard.

wrote in message
oups.com...

Sure, if you want a certain public policy that cost-benefit analysis
won't
support...

Yeah, 'cause that would stand out amongst current public policies like
a stalk of grass in a haystack.


Actually, nearly every public policy has a cost benefit analysis supporting
its existence. It may be an incredibly questionable and/or ridiculous CAB,
but someone somewhere made some claims about specific costs and benefits.
Even pork barrel spending gets it, whether or not you believe a national
railroad museum is somehow worth $100 million to the American people despite
only getting a few thousand visitors a year (semi-made up example)

"Mike Schilling" wrote in message
news

"Alan Anderson" wrote in message
...
"Shawn Wilson" wrote:

Cost-benefit analysis is ALWAYS the right tool for public policy.

George's comments apparently went right over your head. When neither
the costs nor the benefits are known with much certainty, trying to do a
simple analysis of them is just not going to give useful results.

Does anyone believe that Shawn's really an economist? That claim came
long after the initial "I know more about global warming than any lying,
moronic expert" one.


And, look! confirmation of my point.

Not one word on actual CBA of reducing CO2 emissions.

Nope, what we have here is an old fashioned "burn the heretic!".

Why not just admit that there's no justification for reducing CO2 emissions
and be done?

Shawn Wilson pontifficated:
"Mike Schilling" wrote:
"Alan Anderson" wrote:
"Shawn Wilson" wrote:
Cost-benefit analysis is ALWAYS the right tool for public policy.

George's comments apparently went right over your head. When neither
the costs nor the benefits are known with much certainty, trying to do a
simple analysis of them is just not going to give useful results.

Does anyone believe that Shawn's really an economist? That claim came
long after the initial "I know more about global warming than any lying,
moronic expert" one.

And, look! confirmation of my point.
Not one word on actual CBA of reducing CO2 emissions.
Nope, what we have here is an old fashioned "burn the heretic!".
Why not just admit that there's no justification for reducing CO2 emissions
and be done?

Clearly not really an economist. Or, not a sufficiently good one
(yet, perhaps ever) to worry about.

I have been around this point with actual, degreed and practicing
(investment, insurance, academic, government) economists.

Actual, bona-fide trained economists have no problem with the
concept of a problem in which a naive cost-benefits analysis
is not an adequate tool. They know all about future uncertainty,
risk and benefits spectrums instead of naive simple straightforwards
calculable results, etc. The whole insurance industry, most large
investment houses, etc would all collapse if they couldn't perform
similar statistical analysies to try and bound both expected and
maximum exposure and describe probability distributions of returns
from various activities.

Having to do it for a global technical / scientific issue is not
their every day operating method, but there are in fact economists
and climatologists in large insurance and investment companies who
are doing exactly the types of analysis I have described.

Because, when it comes right down to it, global climate catastrophe
is just an annoyance to Wall Street, but some of these issues could
cost the insurers and investment houses real *money*...

Anyone who is actually *in* the field of economics at a professional
level clearly should have been aware of those activities, given that
the people doing them have been fully open about what they are doing,
and that the companies employing them see it as a marketing benefit
in certain circles to have it well known that they're investing a bit
to look that far out.

Ergo, Shawn eagerly ignoring the issue just outs him as either
a fraud, or insufficiently eduated in his own field if he is not...

I so love self-nullifying kooks.


-george william herbert

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 02:38:43 -0700, "Shawn Wilson"
wrote:


"Christopher P. Winter" wrote in message
.. .

I'm not prepared
to believe that most of the climatologists in the world are fools or con
men,
so I have to believe that this claim of "heat island bias" is a strawman
argument.


Why aren't you willing to believe?

Their have no motivation to claim there isn't a crisis. So long as they
say
there IS a crisis they have safe jobs and fat research grants to rely on.

Do you think they're saints?


No, I think they're scientists.


And fools often think scientists aren't like normal people in the appeal of
money and glamor and security.


I'm getting a little tired of being told, without substantiation, that
the great majority of scientists are dishonest -- and that I'm a fool to
believe otherwise.

If you have proof of any sort of corruption underlying the consensus that
global warming is taking place, by all means present it.


There's no way to even start unless we specify what those new
conditions
are. But let's assume for purposes of discussion that global warming is
happening, and that it's going to raise sea levels substantially. Will
you
argue that changing our industrial processes to sequester CO2 output,
and
our
lifestyles to reduce that output, is going to be more expensive than
building
enormous barriers against the sea and relocating low-lying populations?


Yes, I will.

Changing our industrial processes entails a continuing expenditure (mostly
in the form of reduced output for the same inputs) FOREVER.


Way too general. For one thing, CO2 is already being pumped into
declining oil fields to recover product that might otherwise be impossible
to
get.



I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here.


What I'm trying to suggest is that reducing net CO2 output may not be as
onerous as you think.


For another, lifestyle choice is seldom a purely economic decision.

Actually, by definition it is ALWAYS an economic decision. Every decision
on the allocation of scarce resources to meet wants is an economic one.
That's what economics IS.


For sufficiently large definitions of "economics", perhaps. But just as
economic theory relegates things like pollution and its cleanup to the
category of "externalities", there are more things in heaven and earth than
are dreamt of in your economics.


Relocating population is a one time expenditure, if there's any
expenditure
involved at all.


But it's a massive expenditure. And it may last a long time. And many
nations are already overburdened with refugees resulting from other
causes.


Not really. We're talking a muti-decade time frame. That's not refugees.
Thats the shift of US population west since WWII.

Which was largely voluntary, and which was more in the nature of an
expansion than a displacement.

I spent a couple of hours trying to Google up some numbers on the
duration and costs of refugee problems. I didn't have much luck. This would
obviously require a major research project, and I have other things on my
plate at the moment.

But see below for some references.


Sea level rise is a multi-decade process. That time frame is about the
expected life expectancy of buildings.

To relocate the population all that has to happen is for replacement
buildings to be built on higher ground than the ones they're replacing.

The additional expenditure is zero, since the replacement buildings would
be
built anyway, and the effect is to relocate the population ahead of rising
sea levels.


No, there would be additional expenses. Clearing and leveling land,
digging new trenches and emplacing new sewer lines, recreating all the
underpinnings of new communities.


All of which happens anyway as old infrastructure wears out. The net
expense is still zero because the same money will have to be spent on the
same things anyway. Instead of the new building being built here, it's
built there instead.


So let's extend this argument to a city, New York City for example.
Instead of either defending against the rising sea levels (high walls, locks
for shipping, massive pumps, etc.) or adopting measures which will prevent
the sea level rise, we should plan on building a whole new equivalent city
somewhere else, with equivalent water, sewer, communication and electricity
systems, equivalent roads and mass transit systems, and of course equivalent
buildings. Is that what you're advocating?



Rising sea levels is a non-issue economically. The time frame is so slow
that nothing would be lost because of it that wouldn't be lost simply
because of age.


I'm wondering how you know this. Because if, as you assert, no climate
scientist really understands climate science, then they might err in
either
direction. Maybe that last year's film had it right, and New York City
will
be drowned next autumn.


And maybe reducing CO2 emissions will bring about a new ice age that will
destroy civilization and kill of surface life on the planet (cf 'snowball
earth').

ANYONE can play 'maybe' games.


Certainly, and that is what most of us here are doing, since (AFAIK) no
one here can accurately predict the long-term future in detail. But certain
outcomes are more likely than others, and the best tool we have to identify
those outcomes is science.


I also wonder if you truly think that places like Angkor Wat, the
cathedral at Chartres, the pyramids of Giza -- and of Yucatan -- have no
value.


Multi-trillion dollar value? Not all of them put together.


Correct; they are priceless -- at least to the segment of the population
that sees beyond purely economic valuations.


And how about decreasing land area coupled with rising population?


Increasing USEFUL land area as Canada and Siberia thaw.


Seems to me it now falls to you to demonstrate that the land we lose will
be less useful than the land we gain.

And you still haven't addressed the question of entire nations being
inundated. Who takes in their displaced populations?

REFERENCES

1. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc102?OpenForm
Global Overview -- 2000 through 2005

This says that costs of aiding current refugee populations from 2000
through 2005 total roughly $19 billion. (My estimate, from the graph)

2. http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/a...2-4/bacon.html
Lost in Purgatory The Plight of Displaced Persons in the Caucasus
Kenneth H. Bacon and Maureen Lynch

Summarizes plight of IDPs beginning in 1920. That's "multi-decade" for
sure.

3. http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/prevgui...3/p0000113.asp
Famine-Affected, Refugee, and Displaced Populations: Recommendations for
Public Health Issues
MMWR - Vol. 41, No. RR-13
Publication date: 07/24/1992

4. http://healthandenergy.com/potential...ate_change.htm
The Potential Effects of Global Warming
By Thomas M. Socha, M.S.

5. http://www.climate.org/pubs/climate_....2/index.shtml
Rising Seas Threaten Cities, Erode Beaches and Drown Wetlands in Key
Developing Countries

6.
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:K...ulations&hl=en
The Importance of Military Organisations in Stratospheric Ozone and Climate
Protection, February 6-8, 2001, Brussels, Belgium

Among its conclusions is: "Climate protection is important to
environmental security because sea level rise, agricultural disruption, and
displaced populations cause geopolitical instability."

And for comic relief there is this Godwin:

7. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/prog1.htm
The Lack Of Scientific Rigour In Environmentalist Ideology
"The most notorious environmentalists in history were the German Nazis."

"Christopher P. Winter" wrote in message
...


I'm getting a little tired of being told, without substantiation, that
the great majority of scientists are dishonest -- and that I'm a fool to
believe otherwise.

If you have proof of any sort of corruption underlying the consensus
that
global warming is taking place, by all means present it.


Again with the strawman. No one argues whether it's taking place, this
issue is whether it's a problem.

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but scientists are no more selfless
than any other random group of people. They have prejudices of their own
that blind them and they respond like anyone else to the incentives their
world offers. If tweaking a summary or interpreting data to make it seem
things are worse than they are gets them published or gets them the grant
when not doing so won't, they'll do it. Case in point: the so called
temperature record 'hockey stick'. It wasn't produced by honest and simple
science, it was produced by someone who had a specific belief and used the
tools of science to reinforce that belief. It was one of the few instances
egregious enough to get condemned in the literature, but it's hardly unique.
It happens in every field, and the greater the public debate on the issue,
the more it happens.





There's no way to even start unless we specify what those new
conditions
are. But let's assume for purposes of discussion that global warming
is
happening, and that it's going to raise sea levels substantially. Will
you
argue that changing our industrial processes to sequester CO2 output,
and
our
lifestyles to reduce that output, is going to be more expensive than
building
enormous barriers against the sea and relocating low-lying
populations?


Yes, I will.

Changing our industrial processes entails a continuing expenditure
(mostly
in the form of reduced output for the same inputs) FOREVER.


Way too general. For one thing, CO2 is already being pumped into
declining oil fields to recover product that might otherwise be
impossible
to
get.



I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here.


What I'm trying to suggest is that reducing net CO2 output may not be
as
onerous as you think.


It's something that entails a continuing, permanent expenditure. No matter
how much it is each year, it' adds up to a lot over every year.





For another, lifestyle choice is seldom a purely economic decision.

Actually, by definition it is ALWAYS an economic decision. Every decision
on the allocation of scarce resources to meet wants is an economic one.
That's what economics IS.


For sufficiently large definitions of "economics", perhaps. But just as
economic theory relegates things like pollution and its cleanup to the
category of "externalities", there are more things in heaven and earth
than
are dreamt of in your economics.


Pollution is a MARKET externality. There's is NO human endeavor that is not
economic in nature. Anything that involves making a decision about
allocating any sort of resource to meet any sort of desire comes under the
aegis of economics.




Relocating population is a one time expenditure, if there's any
expenditure
involved at all.


But it's a massive expenditure. And it may last a long time. And many
nations are already overburdened with refugees resulting from other
causes.


Not really. We're talking a muti-decade time frame. That's not refugees.
Thats the shift of US population west since WWII.

Which was largely voluntary, and which was more in the nature of an
expansion than a displacement.


Chicago's population dropped from 3.5 million in 1955 to 2.5 million in
1980. That's not differential growth, that's people moving out. And there
wasn't a single refugee among all those people.




I spent a couple of hours trying to Google up some numbers on the
duration and costs of refugee problems. I didn't have much luck. This
would
obviously require a major research project, and I have other things on my
plate at the moment.


You're begging the question by calling it an issue of refugees. Migrants
are not refugees.




Sea level rise is a multi-decade process. That time frame is about the
expected life expectancy of buildings.

To relocate the population all that has to happen is for replacement
buildings to be built on higher ground than the ones they're replacing.

The additional expenditure is zero, since the replacement buildings
would
be
built anyway, and the effect is to relocate the population ahead of
rising
sea levels.


No, there would be additional expenses. Clearing and leveling land,
digging new trenches and emplacing new sewer lines, recreating all the
underpinnings of new communities.


All of which happens anyway as old infrastructure wears out. The net
expense is still zero because the same money will have to be spent on the
same things anyway. Instead of the new building being built here, it's
built there instead.


So let's extend this argument to a city, New York City for example.
Instead of either defending against the rising sea levels (high walls,
locks
for shipping, massive pumps, etc.) or adopting measures which will prevent
the sea level rise, we should plan on building a whole new equivalent city
somewhere else, with equivalent water, sewer, communication and
electricity
systems, equivalent roads and mass transit systems, and of course
equivalent
buildings. Is that what you're advocating?


Yes. Over the next 100 years we'll have to essentially entirely rebuild New
York City anyway, no matter what happens. Indeed, over the next 100 years
we'll have to replace the entire US capital stock. EVERYTHING. (that even
includes all the people) Actually, over 100 years everything in the US will
be replaced multiple times, on average.

Things wear out and need to be replaced. There's no way around that. You
might say "this building is over 100 years old'. Sure, but that other
building has been replaced four time in 100 years. Even that 100 year old
building has gotten enough maintenance over that time to rebuild it more
than once.

No matter what happens, we're going to effectively rebuild New York City
(and inded everything else in the US) 3-5 times over the next century. No
law says it must be rebuilt in place.




And maybe reducing CO2 emissions will bring about a new ice age that will
destroy civilization and kill of surface life on the planet (cf 'snowball
earth').

ANYONE can play 'maybe' games.


Certainly, and that is what most of us here are doing, since (AFAIK) no
one here can accurately predict the long-term future in detail. But
certain
outcomes are more likely than others, and the best tool we have to
identify
those outcomes is science.


And the best tool we have to chose how we respond is economics.





I also wonder if you truly think that places like Angkor Wat, the
cathedral at Chartres, the pyramids of Giza -- and of Yucatan -- have no
value.


Multi-trillion dollar value? Not all of them put together.


Correct; they are priceless -- at least to the segment of the
population
that sees beyond purely economic valuations.


There is NOTHING beyond economic valuation. An economist can tell you the
dollar value you put on your own life. (commen classroom exercise- market
premium on dangerous work times the known risk of that work equals the
market price of a human life, there are also other ways)

I am pretty sure nothing like you mentioned is threatened by global warming
anyway, but if it were those things could simply be moved.



And how about decreasing land area coupled with rising population?


Increasing USEFUL land area as Canada and Siberia thaw.


Seems to me it now falls to you to demonstrate that the land we lose
will
be less useful than the land we gain.


Seems to ME that you need to demonstrate that the land we lose will be more
useful than the land gained. There is certainly a LOT of land in Canada and
Siberia, even if it were less useful per unit area.




And you still haven't addressed the question of entire nations being
inundated. Who takes in their displaced populations?


Last time I checked the total population of nations actually threatened by
rising sea levels was less than one medium sized city.




6.
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:K...ulations&hl=en
The Importance of Military Organisations in Stratospheric Ozone and
Climate
Protection, February 6-8, 2001, Brussels, Belgium

Among its conclusions is: "Climate protection is important to
environmental security because sea level rise, agricultural disruption,
and
displaced populations cause geopolitical instability."


Change causes change. Deep...

(of course, by 'deep' I mean 'boy, that's stupidly obvious')


What the hell IS "geopolitical instability" anyway? it sounds like one of
those terms that sounds scary but doesn't actually mean anything at all.

"Shawn Wilson" wrote in message
news4MCe.48907$ro.17741@fed1read02...

"Christopher P. Winter" wrote in message
...


I'm getting a little tired of being told, without substantiation, that
the great majority of scientists are dishonest -- and that I'm a fool to
believe otherwise.

If you have proof of any sort of corruption underlying the consensus
that
global warming is taking place, by all means present it.


Again with the strawman. No one argues whether it's taking place,

Except you, in a previous incarnation, with arguments ranging from the
laughable to the full-bore psychotic.

Shawn Wilson wrote:
"Justin Bacon" wrote in message
oups.com...

trying as usual to shoehorn reality into his preconceived notion
of Chicago School monetarism.

Never even heard of it. Google has, to the tune of a whopping 36 hits.

Odd. Searching for '"Chicago School" economics' turns up 66,000 hits,
not 36. And searching for '"Chicago School" monetarism" specifically
turns up 843 hits. These include hits like:

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/chicago.htm
http://www.economist.com/research/Ec...m?TERM=CAPITAL
http://economics.about.com/library/g...ago-school.htm

So, obviously, you're as bad at constructing Google searches as you are
at everything else requiring mental acuity.

I wasn't questioning the existence of a school of economics called the
Chicago School, which I am very well aware of. Nor was I questioning the
existance of Monetarism, which I also know very well.

What I was contradicting was the claim of the existence of something called
Chicago School monetarism, which is something that doesn't exist, as its
mere 36 hits compared to 66,000 for "Chicago school" proves.

You're seriously claiming that the Chicago school wasn't famed for its
adherence to the principles of monetarism? Or are you just trying to
weasel your way out of such a blatant display of stupidity on a public
forum?

Next time an expert in the field tells you something is bull****, believe
him.

Oh. God. The irony.

--
Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net