Global Warming

[Viking Coder]

There is some severe irony in the ‘father of modern chemistry’ being the namesake of a group denying scientific knowledge & theory which is heavily based on chemistry based on nothing more than strength of belief.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v386/Artorius/sci-creat.gif

The difference between The Lavoisier Group and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier is that Lavoisier had quantitative scientific research, that was then independently validated, to support his dismissal of the phlogiston theory which didn’t have supporting scientific research. The Lavoisier Group is attempting to dismiss repeatedly independently validated quantitative scientific research with the same tired partial-truths, outright myths & bluster that their US counterparts are using.

http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/news/Lavoisier0104.html

This body is devoted to the proposition that basic principles of physics, discovered by among others, the famous French scientist Antoine Lavoisier, cease to apply when they come into conflict with the interests of the Australian coal industry.

JimmyT wrote: The whole thing [CFCs] is now known to be bad science with wrong conclusions.

Please reference that claim.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4010-earths-ozone-depletion-is-finally-slowing.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003JD003471.shtml (paper referenced in the article)

Almost 30 years after it was first reported that pollutants were destroying the Earth’s protective ozone layer, there is clear evidence that the global CFC ban has had an impact.

For the first time, it has been shown that the rate of ozone depletion in the upper stratosphere – 35 to 45 kilometres up – is slowing down. “This is the beginning of a recovery of the ozone layer,” says Michael Newchurch, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who led the new research.
…
The role of CFCs in ozone depletion was proved in 1974 – the scientists involved later won the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1995/index.html

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1995
Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, F. Sherwood Rowland
“for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone”

If you are not one of the annointed few who understand the problem; Why you

[Rezwan]

JimmyT wrote: This whole global warming argument certainly reminds me of the hubub over CFC’s and how they were going to ruin the ozone layer. The “enviromental” lobby forced their will on US business and US people in the form of legislation which cost consumers billions and billions of dollars.

You sound so victimized. Relax. Bjorn Lomborg, in his book The skeptical environmentalist page 274:

The case of the depleted ozone layer and the solution through restrictive protocols is seen as a success story, in which the world community finally pulled itself together and put the environment before money. … However, it is worth pointing out that the implementation of the CFC ban was strictly profitable. It was actually relatively cheap to find substitutes for CFC (e.g., in refrigerators and spray cans) and at the same time the advantages were quite clear-cut.

In a report for Environment Canada, the Canadian EPA, it was estimated that the overall global cost until 2060 of the implementation of the CFC protocols was about 235 billion 1997 US dollars. By way of comparison, the overall advantage, stemming from avoided damages to fisheries, agriculture and outdoor materials was estimated to amount to some 459 billion 1997 US dollars, not even including about 333,500 fewer skin cancer deaths.

However, these are global figures accumulated over the next 63 years, which because of both the long time and the number of people easily get very large.

E.g., average consumer cost is just a few cents. And benefit is more. And now you get double paper cups at Starbucks instead of styrofoam. Cry me a river.

[Rezwan]

Also, folks, maybe we can ease up on the name calling and other inflammatory language.

[Brian H]

An audit of the IPCC forecasting methods finds them totally incompetent, and not worth the paper they’re printed on, scientifically and mathematically speaking:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st308/index.html

The evidence shows that those forecasting long-term climate change have limited or no apparent knowledge of evidence-based forecasting methods; therefore, similar conclusions apply to the second two elements of the forecasting problem. Public policy makers owe it to the people who would be affected by their policies to base them on scientific forecasts. Advocates of policy changes have a similar obligation. Hopefully, climate scientists with diverse views will begin to embrace forecasting principles and will collaborate with forecasting experts in order to provide policy makers with scientific climate forecasts.

[Viking Coder]

Are you even trying, or is a press release from an oil company funded, directly (ExxonMobil) & indirectly through foundations such as the Scaife Foundations (Gulf Oil Corporation), think tank the best you can find?

Scientific rebuttal is valid regardless of the source, so I was going to give it a read-though. However, I didn’t make it past the second paragraph of the summary before encountering blatant sophistry that denied scientific research & compared it to New York Times headlines from the early 20th century.

The entire composition is a piece of sophistry in that it compares social science forecasting, e.g. “How many babies will be born in Pittsburgh, PA in each of the next five years?” or “Will a 3.5% pay offer avert the threatened strike?”, to climate sensitivity projections based on independently, repeatedly validated scientific research.

When you can’t refute the science of a matter, create a strawman & thrash it.

[Brian H]

The paper is fully referenced. The IPCC is playing in someone else’s territory: forecasting is its own discipline, and you can’t just make up your own rules and mathematics. But that’s what it’s done. The emotional commitment of believers such as yourself does not make up for lack of competence and rigor.

[JimmyT]

You sound so victimized. Relax. Bjorn Lomborg, in his book The skeptical environmentalist page 274:

The case of the depleted ozone layer and the solution through restrictive protocols is seen as a success story, in which the world community finally pulled itself together and put the environment before money. … However, it is worth pointing out that the implementation of the CFC ban was strictly profitable. It was actually relatively cheap to find substitutes for CFC (e.g., in refrigerators and spray cans) and at the same time the advantages were quite clear-cut.

I’ve waited a long time to reply to this one. What do you suppose it means when an industry spokesman says that the implementation was strictly profitable? Do you think it means that consumers made money on it?

You see, I’m a practicing pharmacist and my most frequent contact with CFC’s was the propellant in aerosol canisters for asthmatics. I dispense a lot of these. Probably a couple of dozen each day. Over the last decade I’ve watched the price of these medications drop steadily, until they seemed fairly reasonable. (about $10 per canister). But then drug manufactures were forced to switch propellants. Suddenly the price for these went up to about $40 each. Oh, and the new ones don’t work as well.

Don’t tell me it’s a trivial matter for a patient who uses 3-4 of these every month and may be uninsured. This is a bit different than the styrofoam cups you referred to earlier. I’m not the victim here. My patients are.

Shall I tell them that you said just to hold their breath and relax?

[Transmute]

You see, I’m a practicing pharmacist and my most frequent contact with CFC’s was in the propellant for aerosol canisters for asthmatics. I dispense a lot of these. Probably a couple of dozen each day. Over the last decade I’ve watched the price of these medications drop steadily, until they seemed fairly reasonable. (about $10 per canister). But then drug manufactures were forced to switch propellants. Suddenly the price for these went up to about $40 each. Oh, and the new ones don’t work as well.

Can you prove causality rather then correlation? The price could have gone up for any number of reasons not stimply because of propellant change to HCFC and HFC.

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote: …

E.g., average consumer cost is just a few cents. And benefit is more. And now you get double paper cups at Starbucks instead of styrofoam. Cry me a river.

And now, of course, it turns out that full accounting of emissions and energy use etc. shows styrofoam to be more environmentally friendly. This is characteristic of many of the “half-cocked” solutions which have been implemented, and even more true of the Goracle’s ideas. See

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494

[JimmyT]

JimmyT – 27 October 2008 01:08 AM

You see, I’m a practicing pharmacist and my most frequent contact with CFC’s was in the propellant for aerosol canisters for asthmatics. I dispense a lot of these. Probably a couple of dozen each day. Over the last decade I’ve watched the price of these medications drop steadily, until they seemed fairly reasonable. (about $10 per canister). But then drug manufactures were forced to switch propellants. Suddenly the price for these went up to about $40 each. Oh, and the new ones don’t work as well.

Can you prove causality rather then correlation? The price could have gone up for any number of reasons not stimply because of propellant change to HCFC and HFC.

I suppose I should have said: When the newly formulated one’s were released they were $40 each. Causality was certain.

It’s true the cost of the propellants was very small. But prior to marketing a newly formulated drug (and just the change of propellant does make a newly formulated drug) the entire safety and efficacy test procedures must be repeated. Dispersion of the drug particles in the propellant must be tested. Clinical trials must be done. Raw materials supply chains must be established. New ingredient must be tested for purity. (This often involves the establishment of new analytical testing procedures.) New drug applications must be submitted to the FDA. And on and on and on……… This takes years and costs tens of millions of dollars.

And guess who pays?

[Rezwan]

You’ve reminded me of the refrigerator patent conspiracy. I have no supporting documentation for this – OK, my source is my uncle who liked to point out that the CFC bans coincided with the expiration of patents on refrigerators. The conspiracy here is that the environmentalists are being used by big business to keep control of the market by making proprietary processes with expiring patents obsolete. The motivation here is that big business profits are derived from intellectual property rights, and once the patent expires, they can’t exploit it anymore. Eventually everything will end up in the public domain, and this is not a happy thought for patent owners.

This is an economic issue that I don’t have a good handle on. In the current case, we have big businesses happy to accommodate environmental fears and generate new patents and keep their market share. The losers, as you point out, are certain consumers who have to pay higher prices (although these consumers are free to switch to alternatives, for example, saline nasal rinses which don’t require aerosol and may be more effective for asthma). Other losers are businesses that were prepared to mass produce the older technologies at a much cheaper cost (like third world companies) who now are unable to exploit the expired patents.

In the long run, is it better to keep this up, to keep finding ways for businesses to come up with new patents and jack up their prices? How does our economy work? Do those consumers have shares in the companies that they buy products from? Are any of them (or the consumers of the businesses they work for) employed and overpaid by these companies? It’s all interconnected in a big tangled economic web. How much of pricing is artificially sustained, and how good or bad is that?

Like I say, I don’t have a good economic model or equations to try and process this dilemma.

[JimmyT]

Rezwan, I really think you’re overthinking this one.

I honestly believe there is no conspiricy here.

Just a bunch of ignorant lawmakers who don’t understand the implications of their dictates.

The real question is “Is there any other kind?”

[Brian H]

JimmyT wrote: Rezwan, I really think you’re overthinking this one.

I honestly believe there is no conspiricy here.

Just a bunch of ignorant lawmakers who don’t understand the implications of their dictates.

The real question is “Is there any other kind?”

Many of these lawmakers get their ideas and draft legislation directly from special interest agents who understand the implications perfectly well, but are pushing for maximum advantage. Remember, e.g., Big Tobacco knew from the get-go that “Light” cigarettes were more dangerous than regular because the smaller smoke particles got down deeper in the lungs and caused Small Cell Carcinoma, which is much harder to detect and treat. But the “Light” push saved them from disaster caused by the first waves of cancer fears. And so on.

[Transmute]

JimmyT wrote:

JimmyT – 27 October 2008 01:08 AM

You see, I’m a practicing pharmacist and my most frequent contact with CFC’s was in the propellant for aerosol canisters for asthmatics. I dispense a lot of these. Probably a couple of dozen each day. Over the last decade I’ve watched the price of these medications drop steadily, until they seemed fairly reasonable. (about $10 per canister). But then drug manufactures were forced to switch propellants. Suddenly the price for these went up to about $40 each. Oh, and the new ones don’t work as well.

Can you prove causality rather then correlation? The price could have gone up for any number of reasons not stimply because of propellant change to HCFC and HFC.

I suppose I should have said: When the newly formulated one’s were released they were $40 each. Causality was certain.

It’s true the cost of the propellants was very small. But prior to marketing a newly formulated drug (and just the change of propellant does make a newly formulated drug) the entire safety and efficacy test procedures must be repeated. Dispersion of the drug particles in the propellant must be tested. Clinical trials must be done. Raw materials supply chains must be established. New ingredient must be tested for purity. (This often involves the establishment of new analytical testing procedures.) New drug applications must be submitted to the FDA. And on and on and on……… This takes years and costs tens of millions of dollars.

And guess who pays?

So basically your saying we should stay with tings because of the price of change? Hey guess what NO FOCUS FUSION, lets just keep pumping oil, change infrastructure because of impending doom, f that! it would cost to much to change lets just ride this wave to hell!

[Brian H]

Transmute wrote:

So basically your saying we should stay with tings because of the price of change? Hey guess what NO FOCUS FUSION, lets just keep pumping oil, change infrastructure because of impending doom, f that! it would cost to much to change lets just ride this wave to hell!

That’s gross misrepresentation. Change for the sake of profit is what’s under discussion here. Specifically, insignificant change in order to get around expiring patents, etc.

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