Saving Biodiversity is Essential to Stop Global Warming

This simple message -that we can't save the Earth without saving the actual physical, water-and-soil-and-plant Earth- needs to be said and re-said until everyone understands.  

We've been disappointed by the scientists, leaders, and especially the "environmentalists" (like Sierra Club, Audubon, Union of Concerned Scientists, etc...) who have decided to advocate for industrial "renewable" energy as the only solution.  They've looked at the massive environmental destruction required to mine, manufacture, and construct solar and wind farms and connecting transmission lines - and said yes, we must destroy the world to save the world.

However, there is hope within the current system.  The push to save biodiversity, while sometimes sidelined, has significant support in the COP15 agreement.  That agreement, and related work by TNFD, will have to be considered, often for the very first time, by every company and gov't with sustainability disclosures.  

Even the IPCC addresses the importance of land use - the latest AR6* still shows global photosynthesis absorbing net carbon every year, despite human land-use change continuing to destroy that literal lifeblood of our planet.  

All numbers are gigatonnes of Carbon.  Image Source: Hillis, David.  Life: The Science of Biology.  Textbook published 2020 by Macmillan Higher Ed.  

According to the diagram above, net plant growth (photosynthesis - respiration) stores 3 gigatonnes/year of carbon, offsetting almost 1/3 of the yearly emissions from fossil fuels (9.5 gigatonnes/year).  However, human-altered land use and human-caused fires emit another 2 gigatonnes/year of carbon to the atmosphere.   A gigatonne is about twice the weight of all the humans in the world. (Source: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Gigatonne)

Also, the upcoming (in 2024) standards for including land use change in Scope 1/2/3 emissions reporting will explicitly tie real environmental destruction (clearing forests, bulldozing farmland) to the statistics that accountants love to worship, total tons of carbon emitted.  Now developers (even of renewable energy) can't ignore the cost that continued industrialization has to the Earth's life-giving ability to absorb and store carbon.  

Source: https://ghgprotocol.org/land-sector-and-removals-guidance

Hopefully, with all of these connections being made, people will finally start to give credit where credit is due, and give thanks to our beautiful, fragile planet for all it does for us.

*IPCC overview diagrams of global carbon sinks and sources:

 AR6 (2023) : https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-5/figure-5-12/

AR5 (2013) overview: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Simplified-schematic-of-the-global-carbon-cycle-IPCC-2013-Numbers-represent-carbon_fig4_281185559

AR4 (2007) overview: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-global-carbon-cycle-boxes-are-carbon-pools-and-the-arrows-the-fluxes-between-them_fig2_255642401

AI Developments... and Predictions

 I've been watching the AI developments... and the bloggers writing about the AI "foom".

• Scott Alexander on the feeling of being on the verge of AI Apocalypse.
• Scott Alexander on the new Janus-faced AI simulators, a weird new breed of alien intelligence we didn't expect.
• Erik Hoel on why we shouldn't be cavalier about the potential impact of super-intelligent AI.  (Item 4 of 9 on the page).

But in my opinion, the new AI chatbots may replace Google's current search, but they will stop far short of replacing anything but the most mundane human jobs. 

Its so hilarious that people are worried about artificial intelligence when we haven't even made a robot that can flip hamburgers yet!  Wake up and smell the grease:  the real world is complicated and messy.  We can't even replace the jobs that everyone, even the people currently working them, want replaced.  I don't think we're going to be replacing professionals anytime soon.

Just look at driverless cars.  Driving is a great example of something you'd think computers would be good at.... if you'd never driven a car in the real world!  Computers are great at driving cars in video games, but the real world is messy.  That's the Real World problem.

The second problem is even bigger: the messiness of the human social world!   Even if driverless cars were better than human drivers, that's not good enough.  We expect computers to be perfect.  If a company sells me a car and I wreck it, I'm responsible.  But if the company sells me a driverless car that crashes, the company is responsible.    

For every task that matters we want a human to be responsible.  Even if they solve the Real World problem with bigger and better AIs, the Responsibility problem will always prevent human replacement.  Imagine if my boss could replace me with a computer: he would then be 100% liable for any mistakes the computer made!  Is that the kind of liability any Pointy Haired Boss wants??  As long as he has real humans working for him, there's always someone to share the responsibility.  

Example: imagine something that's even simpler than driving a car: flying a passenger airplane!  I'm sure autopilot could fly an airplane as well as a human.  But would anyone want to fly on an airplane with no human pilot?  We'll always have the human pilots, even if the autopilot does more and more of the routine work.

Humans are social creatures.  The humans who think AI will rule the world must be living inside a computer world.  Its interesting that, as more and more of our world is computerized, we hear more and more from the people living inside the computer world.  But its not the real world!

Manufactured- versus Local-Material Restoration

 

This is not restoration.

"Erosion control" plastic mesh has been washed downstream and wrapped around a sapling.

This is restoration:

Carefully-laid rock armors the entrance to a dry pool.  Balanced stones mark the location of human intention.

Don't Read This if you Trust Me: The Pitfalls of Trusted Sources

Keith Kloor reports that Daniel Kahan recently "said that 'people misinform themselves.' What did he mean by this? Well, people have go-to sources for issues they don’t have time (or the inclination) to research. Your go-to source on a contentious issue–such as climate change or GMOs–is likely to share your values. That affinity is what makes the source trustworthy to you. But that doesn’t mean your trusted source is necessarily going to provide you with correct information."

I disagree for two reasons: 1) That's not quite what Kahan is concerned about, and 2) I think there are some information sources that are able to resist ideological decisions -- and we would do well to turn to them in times of misinformation.

1)  Kahan has an excellent blog where he tries to explain his often counter-intuitive research.  For example: a study he conducted evaluating the relationship between numeracy and ideology.  He looked at a person's ability to detect statistical covariance in case studies that were value-neutral versus case-studies about hot-button topics like abortion and gun control.

Not surprisingly, people had a harder time correctly interpreting data about hot-button topics.  To be specific, people failed to properly analyze data when it conflicted with their ideology.  

Kahan likes to say that "critical reasoning is being used opportunistically."  And he goes on to point out that more proficient people (i.e. more proficient at value-neutral numeracy tasks) are more polarized than less proficient people, not because they are more biased (although this may be true) but because they are better at fitting the evidence to their existing ideological biases.  Importantly, this effect appears to be equivalent on both sides of controversial topics.  Neither liberals nor democrats have a monopoly on crazy baseless beliefs.

2)  This brings me to my second point.  Perhaps there are a group of people who are not liberal or conservative; people who do not have strongly-held opinions about anything apart from what the evidence provides.  Probably more people would self-describe themselves in this group than can actually live up to this standard, but still.  It seems to me that this would be the ideal of a dispassionate, objective observer.  A true scientist.  And if our go-to sources are value-less, or better stated, if our go-to sources hold objective knowledge as their highest value, than we are justified in turning to them for information.  Doesn't mean they can't be wrong, but if they have the characteristics I mentioned previously, then at least they are thoughtful, transparent, and open to conflicting data.

Presumbably Keith would support this second point, if he wants us to keep reading his blog!  However,  Keith Kloor goes on to point out that even trustworthy sources can hold fallacious viewpoints: "Groups like Greenpeace and thought leaders such as Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, and Bill Nye have enormous clout in their respective spheres. "  These people and groups earned this clout by speaking truth to power.  But that doesn't mean all of their opinions are objectively justified.  People can be rational about some topics, but irrational about other topics! 

Good Comment! Science in the Internet Age

A Place For Dialogue (h/t to Sharon McKenzie Stevens)

As technology and culture change, new avenues of science open up. In the 1600's coffee shops became fertile grounds for political and scientific discussion, even while the royal court argued that these "dens of thieves" were illegitimate, divisive, and undermining of authority. So too, today, with online debate comment-threads and forums devoted to contentious topics such as climate change and genetically modified organisms.

I've been reading and participating in online discussions after reading Smarter Than You Think, a wide-ranging and persuasive case for the good side of technology. The author, Clive Thompson, argues that computers and the new types of communication they enable can make us smarter and more efficient. I've been consistently impressed by the quality of discourse online (especially when it is moderated). Wikipedia's methods are the gold-standard for creating knowledge and their standards seem to be widely adopted in many online discussions. For example, in comment-thread debates, facts are treated skeptically unless they are sourced, and scientific articles are held as better sources than news or magazine articles. So although intellectual debates have moved online and outside of academia, the standards for reliable knowledge have been translated to this new domain.

Is it Science?

Much online discussion focuses on current controversies at the intersections of science and society. Ironically, one of the most controversial questions is whether there is a debate at all, on a range of issues. The crux of the question comes down to whether online debates are legitimately "scientific", in the way that curated debates in scientific journals are supposed to be. Based on my analysis, I would argue that discussions characterized by normative standards of knowledge are indeed scientific discussions. I think an open-minded observer would agree that the substantive discussions being held on topics like Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the adoption of Genetically Modified Organisms certainly look like legitimate discussions, and it is hard to imagine holding ourselves to a higher level of discourse. Certainly there is ignorance and personal attacks, but these come from both sides in these debates.

Interestingly, many self-styled "defenders of science" commonly argue in online discussions that there is no substantive debate over the very issues they are debating. Even when comment threads run to hundreds of entries examing the arcane details of programming Global Circulation Models, the proponents of AGW maintain that "the debate is over." As if the online discussion doesn't 'count' in the way that a discussion in a scientific journal or conference would.  Although there are discussions in journals and conferences on these issues, certain commentators seem to conceptualize science as a monolithic enterprise that generates truth that cannot be questioned.

I find this definition of science more dangerous and erosive to the scientific enterprise than the danger posed by skepticism, debates, and unresolved questions. It is far better to expand our definition of science to include online dialogues and debates than to wall off science in the Ivory tower.  Everywhere people uphold normative standards of truth, scientific discourse is possible, and skepticism and questioning should be recognized as a central --and essential-- component of what defines science.

My wish is that both sides in these debates could see that they are engaging in science and legitimate dialogue -- even if they disagree on the ultimate conclusions. Science doesn't have to be monolithic or hermetic.  It is better (more creative, diverse, and relevant) when any conclusion based on facts can be legitimately believed or legitimately doubted.

Climate Crunch

Deconstructing Conclusions

During the winter of 2009-2010 I began investigating climate science, and since then have been reading in the field on-and-off. Again this last winter I have been reading way too much, trying to get to the bottom of various intricacies of the coupled earth-human system. Suffice to say, the Earth's climate is extremely complex, and every scientific sub-discipline has made its own peace with the devil in the details. Getting to the bottom of what scientists believe, and why, is no easy task, and after more than a year of research I have learned a huge amount about the Earth, but still am not definitively convinced about every aspect of climate change science.

This is as it should be. Science is complex and ever-evolving, and the Earth is a very, very complicated place. But provisional results and untested assumptions, although ever-present, make soft bedrock for climate policy. The truth is that we simply do not understand many of the key issues, such as feedbacks, in the climate system.

Many issues, such as divergence in tree-ring proxy records, don't by themselves discredit the theory of anthropogenic global warming, even if scientists can't explain everything. But they do begin to cast doubts. The issue of "hide the decline" probably falls into this category, because although some scientists chose to substitute instrument data for the misbehaving paleo data, the divergance can be explained. But is this explanation just hand-waving? How do we really know what happened hundreds or thousands of years ago? Obviously climate proxies may be complicated, idiosyncratic, and only reliable under certain conditions. It has been said that "trees are not thermometers," but this admission, even if carefully defined, can lead to increasing skepticism.

Unresolved Issues

Skeptic Science (SkS) has a great index of skeptic arguments, many of which continue to be problematic. They attempt to "refute" each argument, and they are the best source for good answers to most of these issues. But not every question can be answered definitively. Sometimes one question simply leads to three or four more. For example, they point out that warming is not due to the sun....but it is very, very, complicated. SkS explains why CO2 lags temperature in paleoclimate....but their response is not good system thinking, doesn't address the skeptic arguments about what the Vostok ice core means, and isn't especially convincing.

I've been researching climate change for over a year, and still am not close to understanding many of the major issues. What's worse, I can't find good evidence that the climate scientists understand all of the issues either! Much of science is dependent on good faith and trust, but at some point an explanation has to be convincing. Some theories (and I would put String Theory and Global Warming into this category) are too gnarly to be comprehended by mere mortals. They may be true, but I can't believe in what I don't understand.

The bottom line is that, if you really want to know,... its complicated. I'm officially revoking my previous conclusion, pending better explanations of the science. Maybe I'll have to wait to believe the models until they're proved true: until then I'll continue to entertain belief in multiple possibilities about this weird, beautiful world we live on.

More Paleoclimate Links:

NASA Climate Monitoring

NOAA paleoclimate

A History of Paleoclimatology

Democracy ahead of Greed?

Arizona Proposition 200: Voter Reward Act would have paid up to $1 million in unclaimed lottery money to one randomly selected voter. We voted it down, in spite of the personal incentive, because apparently we value informed voters over those seeking a free lottery ticket.

But if we don't want uninformed, greedy voters, does that mean that we really want informed voters? Should we have an IQ test, or a voter competency test? My idea is an "entrance-exit poll"; voters are asked to recall their votes fifteen minutes after casting them: if they can't name the candidates and propositions they voted for, maybe those votes didn't matter very much to them and shouldn't matter very much to us. In this way the wheat (knowledgeable votes) would be separated from the chaff (random votes) with a minimum of hassle. The "random" votes could be subtracted from the significant votes in the final tally.

However, in the interests of honesty, I should mention that I cannot recall if I voted for or against Proposition 200...