lsd5you

I mean uncertainties is a bit of an umbrella term. You should be able to be certain about predictions if you make the error bars big enough. If you still can't come up with a reliable assertion doing this then things are spurious.

Comment · 7 years ago

Which is problematic.

They are citing it as a cause but have no quantative basis for it what so ever apparently. The effect could be 0, or negative, they've apparently just brought feelings on the situation.

So figure SPM.7 looks pretty serious. It is 60-80 years in the future (probably further at the time of the models) and based on models (albeit on the agreement of presumably independent models). However current shortages are being attributed to climate change. To do this it should be possible to a) show a long term drop in precipitation and b) show climate related causality somehow. This should be easier than accurately predicting the future - but of course is less easy than innaccurately predicting the future.

So what you show I would say reenforces my point. We have predictions based on models (which we can take seriously or not), but then we also have current events which are being attributed to climate change with no quantifiable basis for doing so - despite the fact it should be possible to come up with some kind of proxy for climate induced problems(other than just a shortage happened).

Comment · 7 years ago

There have always been droughts though, and things have varied from location to location. This effect you are invoking needs actually quantifying, and then comparing to the change in population. Would these regions coped if their populations hadn't drastically increased? Has water supply actually even decreased?

e.g. Yemen, population has gone up x4 in 40 years (or something like this). They have wars, and water shortages. What is the relative contribution of climate change?

So, see this article.

https://climateandsecurity.org/2016/08/03/a-storm-without-ra...

It is fairly balanced and fact filled, but when it comes to reduced rainfall and climate change, they are invoked, but left completely unquantified. No source, no estimate, no numbers (let alone a nice impartial unmanipulated graph). Did it decrease 10%, 1%. So if they have absolutely no handle on the quantification how can they make the claim at all? If there is a large uncertainty then that should be expressed.

This is what I mean, we are being primed to accept climate change as an explanation. When we have other massive, dominating factors - massive population growth and running out of acquifer runway (i.e. they have been in deficit for a long time).

Comment · 7 years ago

I dunno, either we lurch from crisis to crisis and possibly end up with an ungovernable world, or look at implementing something like a one child policy in countries with very high population growth (or pressuring them to do so by preventing them from exporting population).

Certainly move the discourse beyond ... so well population is going up, nothing can be done about it.

Comment · 7 years ago

We will have overpopulation and environmental crises in the future and they will get explained away mindlessly as being completely caused by climate change, when that may be only a partial or even not significant factor in the events.

Not enough fresh water - climate change! Not the fact that the population increased by a factor of 4, and the local acquifers have been drained.

Comment · 7 years ago

but we will be able to genetically engineer ourselves out of it before it becomes a serious issue.

What is your level of uncertainty regarding this? It would seem to be merely a possibility, especially if we undershoot due to falling intelligence levels ...

Comment · 7 years ago

IQ being 'a load of crap' doesn't follow from some journalists glib (and incorrect) claim. What is more, if it were true and the IQ differences were such that todays average measured as a genius then, if you were to witness someone ace the test, you could reasonably hail them a genius at least in the colloquial sense.

Comment · 7 years ago

Erm surely ability is important as well. Programming is no different in this regard to pro sports - some people have more talent (which probably in turn breaks down into innate attributes, determination and learning opportunity earlier in life).

Comment · 7 years ago

And probably also the non-local effects of using a framework - and a fairly magic one at that. All the effects of which are understood when creating the functionality, but the maintainer (even when it is the author) has a much harder time with probably only a partial understanding with certain things being out of mind.

Comment · 7 years ago

Which is why precautionary and moderate tariffs are suitable, with some discretion for cases where things are especially egregious and/or where the economics are different (low margin vs luxury goods need different levels of tariff).

Probably ideally tariff levels should not directly made by the executive, but rather some kind of review system - (although quangos are another problem).

Comment · 7 years ago

I'd argue that trump is a break from those past dogmas and regulatory capture (to some extent). Certainly he wasn't approved by the media - who are controlled by big business via advertisements.

Trump is rightwing in the same way that the german national socialists were right wing. i.e. Not really economically, or at least big business has to be aligned with the nation. I am not drawing an equivalence - he is to the Nazis what Bernie Sanders is to the Soviets i.e. not comparable in scale at all.

Comment · 7 years ago

Which is why tariffs make a lot of sense. Yet there has been this massive movement of reaganite/right wing tariffs bashing for decades now - where the mantra of tariffs causing economic harm is mindlessly repeated. You would think they didn't generate tax revenue (and thus reduce taxes/improve economics elsewhere), and where not easier to collect than many other taxes.

I'm not denying the dangers. I can see how countries could fall into populist/short term positions or get involved in harmful escalating tit-for-tat increases, but this is a strawman when it comes to having moderate tariffs.