Berkshire flooding also "major incident"

[biffvernon]

http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/02/1 ... t-dieting/

[Mean Mr Mustard]

While there are a few notable exceptions, why is it that those of a Right-wing persuasion are often climate sceptic cornucopians? If Labour wasn't working, most Conservatives aren't conserving...

[biffvernon]

While there are a few notable exceptions, why is it that those of a Right-wing persuasion are often climate sceptic cornucopians?

Because they are stupid.

[UndercoverElephant]

While there are a few notable exceptions, why is it that those of a Right-wing persuasion are often climate sceptic cornucopians?

Because they are stupid.

To a certain extent, the answer is indeed that simple.

It is related to belief of many on the right about a "left wing conspiracy" in academia in general. There is a connection between being intelligent and well educated and understanding that the sort of things believed in by the political right tend to be naive/stupid. And right wing academics tend to run into credibility problems.

[Little John]

While there are a few notable exceptions, why is it that those of a Right-wing persuasion are often climate sceptic cornucopians?

Because they are stupid.

To a certain extent, the answer is indeed that simple.

It is related to belief of many on the right about a "left wing conspiracy" in academia in general. There is a connection between being intelligent and well educated and understanding that the sort of things believed in by the political right tend to be naive/stupid. And right wing academics tend to run into credibility problems.

The above is an important point and I would add the following:

Someone who is right wing is, indeed, more likely to hold irrational beliefs that are linked to a crude tendency to seek to maximise short term material gain over longer term more enlightened and strategic ones. Taken to their extreme, such behavioural tendencies will correlate with greater risk taking and a lack of empathy with others. Psychopathy, in other words. In general, such tendencies will lead to excessive failure in any endeavour. However, every now and then, they will lead to success and, given the risks that are taken and the potential rewards on offer, when success does occur, it may be great. The upshot of all the above is that, eventually, such an approach will lead to these kinds of people winning the day in terms of power. Never mind that for every one that does, there will be countless other who fail.

Compare the above to a more intelligent and cautious type of approach. Such an approach will be far less likely to fail, but is also far less likely to be subject to massive success either. Indeed, once the psychopaths are in charge, the rest of us, in particular the more intelligent parts of the rest of us, will do the only intelligent thing available and manage the psychopath's affairs for them. Possibly in the hope of ameliorating their worst excesses. Or possibly just because there is no other choice.

This is the world we live in. The psychopaths are in charge. They have been since the dawn of civilisation.

[RenewableCandy]

There's even been research that's shown that right-leaning people have more action in the Amygdela(sp?), where the brain deals with emotions and memory, than in whatever (younger, as in less reptilian) part of the brain deals with rational decision-making.

But, of course, that research was carried out by left-wing academics

[biffvernon]

A big row is emerging following this bonkers piece in the Mail on Sunday unbder the headline

No, global warming did NOT cause the storms, says one of the Met Office's most senior experts

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... perts.html
in which the Mail says that Mat Collins said

‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’

which is perfectly true, but the Mail then infers that

His statement appears to contradict Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo.

which it does not.

However, this morning Mat tweeted thus:

I said that the models don't tell us much about how the jet stream is affected by climate change. I don't disagree with Julia

and then this evening thus:

Together with the Met Office I'll be putting out a statement tomorrow clarifying the statements in the Mail on Sunday article.

Watch out for tomorrow's episode.

[biffvernon]

And I see that Gavin Schmidt retweeted Mat Collins' tweet. I guess that makes a conspiracy against the Mail.

And I love this one:

Gavin Schmidt ‏@ClimateOfGavin
If choice is btw thinking @mat_collins & Slingo fundamentally disagree, or that Daily Mail is making up stuff again, I'd go w/#2 #Bayesian

[biffvernon]

And here, as promised, is Prof Mat Collin's reply, on the Met Office website:

http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2014 ... et-office/

An article by David Rose appeared yesterday in the Mail on Sunday entitled: ‘No, global warming did NOT cause the storms, says one of the Met Office’s most senior experts’

In it he says that Mat Collins, Professor in Climate Systems at Exeter University, ‘appears to contradict’ the report released by the Met Office last weekend and that he ‘declined to comment on his difference in opinion’ with one of the report’s authors, Dame Julia Slingo.

This is not the case and there is no disagreement.

[biffvernon]

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/documents/4219 ... 3f6785a40e

Over the past 100 years the intensity of UK precipitation has increased during winter, and to a lesser extend also during spring and autumn. This has been accompanied by more frequent spells of very wet weather and an increase in total precipitation, at least during the last 40 years

[Tarrel]

I don't really see the point of the debate. Supposing we emerged with a (unlikely) consensus that this year's unusual weather was, unequivocally, linked to climate change. So what? I still don't think it would be enough to change either:
a) Government energy policy, or
b) Individuals' behaviour

Everything I'm reading is telling me that nothing short of a full global economic crash and/or reforestation on a massive scale is going to bring us back from the tipping points we are approaching. The socio-political mechanisms just don't exist on a global scale to precipitate the behaviour changes we need to make in a controlled way.

If there is a practical benefit to be gained from the linking of the extreme weather to climate change, it is in the realisation that these kinds of weather events are here to stay, and are not "100 year" or "250 year" storms, but are regular occurrences that our infrastructure needs to be redesigned to cope with.

[biffvernon]

Yes, but political and policy spending consequences follow therefrom.

By the way, that 'honest' climate scientist that the Fail on Sunday claimed to have found wrote, a fortnight earlier, that "The risk of extreme versions of the El Niño weather phenomenon will double over the coming decades due to global warming," http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featuredne ... 50_en.html
(Or at least someone in his office wrote that.)

[clv101]

Everything I'm reading is telling me that nothing short of a full global economic crash and/or reforestation on a massive scale is going to bring us back from the tipping points we are approaching. The socio-political mechanisms just don't exist on a global scale to precipitate the behaviour changes we need to make in a controlled way.

Agreed, in my opinion avoiding 2+ degrees warming is not compatible with the continuation of any kind of 7bn+ civilisation. The 'pro-active' mechanisms are hopeless. In fact, mitigating just a little bit of climate change. Pushing the impact timeframes out by a few decades may actually cause more net damage than early impacts/collapse.

If we accept that collapse is inevitable, then in the looong run, an early collapse may less damaging than a delayed collapse. The more damaging, delayed collapse may be what pro-active mitigation gets us.

Did you see this I wrote a few years ago: http://chrisvernon.co.uk/2012/12/recognising-reality/

[Little John]

Everything I'm reading is telling me that nothing short of a full global economic crash and/or reforestation on a massive scale is going to bring us back from the tipping points we are approaching. The socio-political mechanisms just don't exist on a global scale to precipitate the behaviour changes we need to make in a controlled way.

Agreed, in my opinion avoiding 2+ degrees warming is not compatible with the continuation of any kind of 7bn+ civilisation. The 'pro-active' mechanisms are hopeless. In fact, mitigating just a little bit of climate change. Pushing the impact timeframes out by a few decades may actually cause more net damage than early impacts/collapse.

If we accept that collapse is inevitable, then in the looong run, an early collapse may less damaging than a delayed collapse. The more damaging, delayed collapse may be what pro-active mitigation gets us.

Did you see this I wrote a few years ago: http://chrisvernon.co.uk/2012/12/recognising-reality/

So, you accept that a global human population of 7+ billion human is unsustainable and that a large and early collapse of human civilisation leading to a significant die off is probably our best chance for making it into the deep future? If so, we are singing from essentially the same page CLV.

[biffvernon]

Which takes us to the debate started by Holmgren's recent paper http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-conte ... ute13c.pdf
and our positions on the diagram.



I think I hold many positions on the diagram simultaneously in a sort of quantum state of uncertainty.