The Carbon Thread

[droid]

How do you make a rational economic calculation in a society with no concept of private property?

 

[vimothy]

bang on.

Actually, it's not.

First of all, the NAIRU is used by all modern central banks and policy makers. It is part of the academic consensus and every economics text book printed from the 80s on that I've ever bought has a section on it. It is the reason why we no longer have full employment policies.

Secondly, if climate science is equivalent to physics, can someone explain how they conduct controlled experiments?

Look, we can't all be Richard Feynman, but we can read his essay. Enlightenment is only a click away!

 

[vimothy]

How do you make a rational economic calculation in a society with no concept of private property?

Rational just means maximising (of course this is not a formal definition!). It's no harder to generate a production function for a feudal society, a communistic society or any type of society than our own. Again, all you need is a scatter plot and a regression line.

 

[scottdisco]

Actually, it's not.

First of all, the NAIRU is used by all modern central banks and policy makers. It is part of the academic consensus and every economics text book printed from the 80s on that I've ever bought has a section on it. It is the reason why we no longer have full employment policies.

Secondly, if climate science is equivalent to physics, can someone explain how they conduct controlled experiments?

Look, we can't all be Richard Feynman, but we can read his essay. Enlightenment is only a click away!

you got me Vim, as usual my dilettante entry into a thread is slapped down

so the NAIRU consensus is a monetarist consensus?

 

[vimothy]

so the NAIRU consensus is a monetarist consensus?

No, just a general consensus. There aren't really any monetarists any more, because everyone's aware that there is no empirical link between monetary aggregates and inflation. There is something called New Monetarism, but it's more like your bog-standard rational expectations stuff than anything MF ever wrote.

 

[scottdisco]

cheers, i'll retract my NAIRU thing of course! i like the grading of evolution -> everything else, see what you're getting at.

do you know of any economic models that show/explain why Latin America has been the only region to make inroads into inequality since 2000? (pink-hued Latin America, in many cases, obviously. noting that may, of course, answer the question itself but i wouldn't want to be definitive. though given the likes of Paraguay and Brazil are some of the least equitable countries, i suppose you could say it's about time.)

 

[vimothy]

Ah, don't retract it--you'll make me feel like even more of an ass. It was the closest analogy I could think of, and I think it's pretty good. But still.

And I know little about Latin America, I'm afraid. Maybe Mr Boshambles is about...?

 

[massrock]

What do you mean by compelling? Man-made global warming is a plausible explanation of the hockey stick, so by all means use your judgment, but don’t mistake your judgment for scientific method.

Surely you don't mean scientific method because employing a reasonable hypothesis is entirely congruent with scientific method. I think what you mean to say is 'absolute proof' which is of course fair enough, I don't disagree there, but I wouldn't say that it's unscientific to suggest that this may well be what is happening and how it is happening. Note though that even this is not necessarily a judgement. i.e. there's an assumption that the global climate left to it's own devices is a self-regulating system, but can we say for sure that human beings and their actions are not part of such a homoeostatic mechanism? We were spawned by Earth after all. Probably.

Still though, the fact is that we are acting in the world and can see where our actions may be harmful to the global system and as human beings we are in a position to modify our actions.

Compelling (and I should hope this was obvious) means that showing a correlation in the data is one thing, but it is of course a much stronger pointer if a mechanism by which that process may occur can be understood and shown to exist.

So yes what it is is a plausible explanation. Would you prefer an implausible one?

 

[massrock]

Some scientists may hold man-made global warming to be an incontrovertible fact, and you may like to suggest that this clam is not strictly in keeping with scientific method, which may again be fair enough as far as the way in which that claim is presented goes. Perhaps a little hyperbole to engage the imaginations of a wider audience. This doesn't change what we do know or observe though, or the likelihood of a given explanation being true. Or the fact that it may be highly prudent to take remedial action anyway even if it can't be absolutely proved at this point.

 

[massrock]

i like the device of comparing economics and climatology to get a debate going though Vim

Yes, fair play for bringing it up in this way. Now let me read the rest of what people have said.

 

[massrock]

What I'm saying is that's why it is taken seriously. The ads on buses might read "There probably is man-made climate change so start doing something about it."

 

[massrock]

I never claimed it was easy, nor did I say that they're weren't problems with modeling. The basic fact remians though, natural physical processes are consistent and reliable, human behaviour is not.

Economics uses models to predict outcomes. These models in themselves are fundamentally based on a model of human behaviour. Climatology is based on models which are based on observable and predictable principles.

I think overall you could say that global climate and economics are both fundamentally unpredictable and impossible to model, that is they are chaotic systems.

But also in both cases there are subsets of simpler processes and actions that are well understood, and whose effects may be predicted.

Like, if you pump absurd amounts of money into an economy you can have an idea of some probable effects. Inflation etc.

So what happens when you pump loads of CO2 into a planet's atmosphere?

 

[grizzleb]

I think overall you could say that global climate and economics are both fundamentally unpredictable and impossible to model, that is they are chaotic systems.

But also in both cases there are subsets of simpler processes and actions that are well understood, and whose effects may be predicted.

Like, if you pump absurd amounts of money into an economy you can have some idea of the probable effects. Inflation etc.

So what happens when you pump loads of CO2 into a planet's atmosphere?

Kids playing with big piles of carbon, workers getting their breatheable air in the morning and their wives running to breathe it all up before it becomes mostly carbon?

 

[droid]

Critical examination of the performance of climate models, leading to revision and improvement of the models, is a necessary and ongoing activity within climate modelling (see below). Nevertheless, it is worth stating some the inherent features of all models:

• Climate models are based on fundamental physical laws (at the very basic level for example, Newton’s third law of motion) expressed in terms of mathematical equations. They are not, as in some prediction endeavours, statistical fits to past observations...
  
  
• Each component of a model is thoroughly tested; often using data from field experiments or dedicated process models representing, for example the detailed structure of a cloud. Models and their components are subject to scientific peer review...
  
  
• Models cannot be adjusted to give any answer a climate modeller might wish to get about climate change. The complexity of the system precludes this. Many features of the past and future climate produced by models, for example the climate sensitivity — the global mean temperature change for a doubling of CO2 — could not have been predicted or somehow set when the model was put together. During model development it is the case that optimisation occurs to make the model’s fields best fit observations of present-day climate. However, this is often somewhat ad hoc, and only in the case of some reduced complexity models has it been attempted systematically...

http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/2106/500/

 

[vimothy]

Surely you don't mean scientific method because employing a reasonable hypothesis is entirely congruent with scientific method.

I must say, I found your post rather hard to parse. What I'm saying is that yes it's fine to propose reasonable hypotheses, but don't mistake your hypothesis for a result, no matter how reasonable or otherwise.

 

[vimothy]

Note though that even this is not necessarily a judgement. i.e. there's an assumption that the global climate left to it's own devices is a self-regulating system, but can we say for sure that human beings and their actions are not part of such a homoeostatic mechanism? We were spawned by Earth after all. Probably.

Again, please note that I have not said that AGW is not happening--only that the evidence for it is not strong.

 

[vimothy]

Some scientists may hold man-made global warming to be an incontrovertible fact, and you may like to suggest that this clam is not strictly in keeping with scientific method, which may again be fair enough as far as the way in which that claim is presented goes.

No, you misunderstand me. I'm obviously not being clear enough, which is my fault. Perhaps there is another way to put this...

 

[scottdisco]

basically, Vim (and do stop me if i'm being a bit bold w my necessarily broad brush strokes, Vim ) was painted as a Hayekian when he first came on this board, more or less (whether that was fair or otherwise is moot for the purposes of this post).

from the bits of his blog i can understand, of late he has turned more to Keynes.

so perhaps a gradual re-appraisal of economic models has inspired him to train his eye on this thread experiment we're currently engaged in?

 

[massrock]

I must say, I found your post rather hard to parse. What I'm saying is that yes it's fine to propose reasonable hypotheses, but don't mistake your hypothesis for a result, no matter how reasonable or otherwise.

Hmm, maybe something to do with clams causing misunderstanding.

You said:

so by all means use your judgment, but don’t mistake your judgment for scientific method.

Well, it seems to me that judgement may be employed in forming a hypothesis. so judgement is not incompatible with scientific method. So i said that when you say 'scientific method' there you seem really to intend to say 'proof'...

What I'm saying is that yes it's fine to propose reasonable hypotheses, but don't mistake your hypothesis for a result, no matter how reasonable or otherwise.

..or 'result', although you can have a result without proof. a result may be inconclusive.

Incidentally where is this 'your' directed? What I'm saying is that this is the reasoning, i.e. it's not simply that there is a correlation in the graphs.

Who is it who are mistaking '[their] hypothesis for result'? Although now you seem to be about to not say that.

 

[massrock]

Again, please note that I have not said that AGW is not happening--only that the evidence for it is not strong.

I know.

I wasn't addressing what your position might be there, nor was I saying either way, either. Something slightly separate, though not really separate. about how AGW can be thought about anyway.

No, you misunderstand me. I'm obviously not being clear enough, which is my fault. Perhaps there is another way to put this...

What makes you say that from what you've quoted there? Anyway, carry on...