Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

The continental approach to energy and the environment

by Paul Wells on Monday, December 14, 2009 1:49pm - 105 Comments

It’s going well.

Tags: black holes, Jim Prentice

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Ted

Clarification: are you admitting to being in denial about AGW or about global warming?

http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

I deny AGW and think global warming is happening if you compare our century to past centuries, like now compared to Little Ice Age era but I don't believe the world is getting warmer this decade compared to last one. I agree that climate changes over the decades but I am not buying the scare stories about how humans are at fault.

AGW is on hold this decade, don't you know, but apparently in 10-20 years it is going to come on even stronger than originally predicted.

"Many scientists agree, however, that hotter times are ahead. A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.

"The preponderance of evidence is that global warming will resume," Nicholas Bond, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, said in an e-mail.

"Natural variability can account for the slowing of the global mean temperature rise we have seen," said Jeff Knight, a climate expert at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, England." McClatchy, Aug 19 '09

http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

Then what *is* at fault, jolyon? That's the thing. Every natural cause we know of suggests that we should have been cooling, significantly, over the past couple of decades. We haven't been.
And we're not cooling now either, as independant statisticians found when they looked at the numbers blind:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/26/tech/ma…

http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"Then what *is* at fault …"

I have no idea and neither do climatologists apparently. There does not have to be a 'fault' because Mother Nature likes to change our climate over the decades. Way back when, there was a Roman Warm Period, then Dark Ages Cold Period, then Medieval Warming, then Little Ice Age and now we are in warm era again. I wonder if any one notices that Mother Nature likes her warm/cool cycles.

I am not impressed with the models that predicted CO2 and global temp would increase in tandem and now that they aren't we get arguments about how the science is good even though it's wrong or nonsense about how warming is on hold for a decade or two. I will start taking AGW climatologists more seriously when their work/models accurately reflect what's actually occurring.

http://intensedebate.com/people/TJCook TJCook

"I am not impressed with the models that predicted CO2 and global temp would increase in tandem…"

You say this in your capacity as a climate scientist? You've actually studied the models themselves? Or have you read a bunch of blog posts from people as qualified as you, and decided that they know climate science better than, say, climate scientists?

It takes a special kind of arrogance for a smart guy like you to be a denier.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"Based on current models, we predict: under [BAU] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 oC per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade)" IPCC First Assessment Report

I don't claim to know much about science or math but I am capable of reading more than blogs. So I absolutely agree, lets see what the climatologists have to say about IPPC prediction of 0.3 celcius increase:

"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one." Discovery March 2009

"At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact." Der Speigel, Nov 2009

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t." Dr Trenberth, email

"It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community," says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. "We don't really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point." Der Spiegel, Nov 2009

"A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere." Science Daily, Dec 2007

I am sure one of these days you or Thwim will provide some links or sources yourselves that show just how accurate IPPC reports are. It is always a lot of hot air about the science from you two but remarkably never provide any evidence or sources or anything, really.
André

You're cherry picking.

Of Kyle Swanson, he also said in that interview : "When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming," Swanson said. "Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."

Of Mojib Latif, he was also saying: "We have to explain to the public that greenhouse gases will not cause temperatures to keep rising from one record temperature to the next, but that they are still subject to natural fluctuations,"

I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to say. Is it that denialists have reason to shame the scientific community? Is it that scientist have no clue what's going on? Because that is simply not true. They have a very good idea what's going on, they simply haven't confirmed it yet. The line to sum it up comes from one of the articles you quoted:

"Perhaps we suggested too strongly in the past that the development will continue going up along a simple, straight line. In reality, phases of stagnation or even cooling are completely normal,"

If you want a clear demonstration of how CO2 affects temperature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co…
http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

Actually, they do know.. it's man-made CO2. That you don't like the answer doesn't make it less true.

Those warm periods and cold periods you're talking about, what exactly do you think I meant when I said every natural cause we know of? Milankovitch cycles, solar energy, Dansgaard-Oeschger events, PDO, albedo, all of it suggests that we should have been cooling down a lot over the past two decades. We haven't been.

As for climatologists models and work, they do reflect what's actually occurring. Far better than any denialist theory does. Are they exact? Hell no. It's a big planet, and there are a lot of effects interrelated.

Now, you can toss out the theory that works the best because it doesn't work perfectly, or you can actually read the science rather than the press about the science.

http://chuckercanuck.blogspot.com chuckercanuck

Sigmund Freud is not a philosopher.

I too am no fan of the continentalist approach except for the neologisms. I'm a big fan of making up words like, schleppershisms. Schleppershisms is the act of making a declarative sentence that has meaning only in so far as it has no meaning. It waits for the reader to fill it with reading based on the I-thou relationship the reader develops with the larger work in which the schleppershism is found. If one develops an I-It relationship with the text, the schleppershism fails to transcend text-string-as-incoherent-alignment-of-coherence threshold and remains a simple bumpkineria. Bumpkineria is my word for gobble-dee-gook assembled by men (almost always men) who assemble a semblance of thought without ever actually producing a thought.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

Freud certainly was part philosopher. Civilization and Its Discontents, Totem and Taboo, for two examples (combining psychology, philosophy and sociology, I'd argue).

TedTylerEzro

In ancient times we were man-apes who killed and ate our tribal leader because he monopolized food and women, which lead to the weaker creatures killing him. Out of guilt and fear about their killing, they deified that tribal leader and that's how the idea of God as an all powerful spiritual father entered society's consciousness.

That's the kind of stuff the methods of continental philosophy produces. Even when they stumble across things that are verifiable later by other methods, there is no way through the methods of continental philosophy to show what is correct and what isn't. It is just idle speculation without any means of testing or proving the hypothesis.

Now religion has a lot of introspection leading to subjective thoughts about the nature of god, the universe, and consciousness. However, continental philosophy isn't a religion, it often pretends to be a science, and therein lies the problem I have with it.

André

The old alfa-ape pride theory is now just a myth and an excuse for men to be weak.

By studying the skeletons of recently found Ardipithecus species(our oldest ancestor): "The canine teeth of A. ramidus are smaller, and equal in size between males and females, which suggests reduced male-to-male conflict, increased pair-bonding, and increased parental investment. "Thus, fundamental reproductive and social behavioral changes probably occurred in hominids long before they had enlarged brains and began to use stone tools," the research team concluded."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardipithecus

In other words, marriage and fidelity came long before we became self-conscious.

Anon

"Right, in forty-five minutes while doing other stuff, I found a book-length treatment of the topic by an influential American think-tank…"

Thing is, you apparently weren't aware of it before you made that assertion about a "continental approach to energy and the environment."

As we all know, one can find "anything* on the Internet to support what one's saying after that fact.

Fail.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Style Style

You mean my assertion that our \”continental approach\” wasn't based on hastily arranged photo ops? Honestly, I didn't think Wells would get so defensive about that.

http://intensedebate.com/people/sea_n_mountains sea_n_mountains

stay with the plot Style or can you just not find one?

http://intensedebate.com/people/Style Style

Now we're waiting for Paul to call the author of the CFR study and report what he learns.

http://intensedebate.com/people/sea_n_mountains sea_n_mountains

i'd say he clearly poo pooed that 18 hours ago.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

You are so out of your depth it's not even funny.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Style Style

Yes, finally that throw-down between the medieval historians and the continental philosophers (or their fans anyway) I've long dreamt of. Bring it historians! Come on, are you afraid of the intellectual content of the philosophers? I'm sure it's just a myth…
TedTylerEzro

Hah! Like you have any right to accuse me of spouting off when I'm out of my depth.

And of course I'll toss contempt on the continental philosophy, and it is part of the enlightenment since it flowed out of Hegel and Spinoza, and because you believe in the grand drama of throwing off the shackles of superstition for reason that even a cursory examination of the time period will reveal is a crock.

Oh, and I certainly will praise good history, and even problematic history that is still a valuable source, over continental philosophy. This is because it is the reading of primary sources is the surest inoculation against ideas such as "societal streams of consciousness". You will always find the exception in history that disproves the theories about how they've come to a greater level of awareness of their consciousness than others in society or their forebearers. For much of the rest of their theories about consciousness, empirical sciences such as neurological sciences have largely destroyed that as well.

This is because continental philosophy method's of arriving at conclusions is fundamentally false. Introspection when applied to observations about the material world simply doesn't arrive at any objective or valuable insight.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

Why do I get the feeling that you toss all "continental" (i.e. non-analytical) philosophies into a pot, boil them into a sludge, and then simper about the flavour? "Societal streams of consciousness" . . . WTF is that? It's like you've heard of everything after Aquinas through a big long game of telephone tag.

Your anti-evolutionist neurosis is stark malarky coming from a Christian. Or at least it's highly unorthodox. It is also profoundly non-empirical. Do you seriously think that we don't have a different sense of human communication now than we did twenty years ago, thanks to the Internet, or than we had sixty years ago, thanks to TV? Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. The reason our forebears disagreed is because their societies were not changing at a mile a minute and they had a chance to reflect on human nature without distraction. We simply don't have that luxury.

So you honestly do think that the enlightenment and continental philosophy are one and the same? News flash: the enlightenment is optimistic about human nature, while German philosophy from Schopenhauer on is pessimistic. And it's not about "throwing off the shackles of superstition," it's about being unable to escape from superstition. You keep bungee jumping on this stuff and eventually you'll find you forgot to secure the bungee.

Depth . . . OK, dude, show us your depth. Quote me a passage from a medieval historian that shows the kind of historical consciousness you get with 19th C German Biblical and classical scholarship. It's all there online. You apparently know what you're looking for. Quote something.

TedTylerEzro

Stark malady about being anti-evolutionist in societal development? Oh, you mean the Christian idea that god intervenes through time and that there is a salvation narrative? I see no reason why I should admit to zeitgeist, or a common consciousness, or the idea that we are morally or intellectually different to our forebears through the process of dialectic It isn't as if process theology is orthodox Christianity.

But that's digression. We are talking about the validity of the methods of continental philosophy, not whether or not I'm personally on shaky ground because of my belief system. Which, not so oddly enough given your continental philosophical sympathies, think you understand how it has affected my consciousness despite never having met me or studied my faith in depth.

Of course ideas have influence, and so too does society have influence. But ideas don't subsume people and societies into a particular way of thinking. The credulous, the skeptical, the passionate, the irrational, the rational, the empiricist and the mystic can be found in any society.
TedTylerEzro

Now what do you want in terms of historical consciousness? Now what do you want in terms of historical consciousness? Do you want proof that thinkers between Augustine and the Scholastics believed that the bible should not be taken literally when it was in dispute with other reasonable evidence? Do you want the idea that the scholastic method sought to resolve contradictions between various sources, not only in biblical scholarship but in the other "sciences" (not to be confused with modern science that follows the scientific method). Do you want proof that they examined their sources critically, vigorously debating whether doubts about the perceived orthodoxy had validity (which they also did, though not without controversy). It will take me a few days to chase it all down by citing primary sources, but I can email it to you if you like. Give me a few days however, as I have a exam on Wednesday I should be studying for. I'm not sure if they had theories about zeitgeist, but it is possible. They had all sorts of crazy ideas, largely because they practiced introspection without any means of testing or proving the hypothesis as well. It is why I depend on the descendants of empiricists, scientists, on the appropriate questions.

I'll certainly accept though that history, like all disciplines, grows in knowledge if practiced. I'm not sure, but I can certainly accept that the Scholastics didn't know that the Pentateuch wasn't penned by Moses. I do however think that there would be many Scholastics who wouldn't be unduly shocked by it.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

You forgot to mention that Freud concludes by saying it may never really happened that way.

That aside, Civilization is a much better work. Totem and Taboo was influential in some sociological/anthropological cirlces for a little bit (mainly in regard to debates around the incest taboo), but is fairly weak. I was only countering the dismissal of Freud as philosopher.
TedTylerEzro

That's fine that he said it may have never happened that way, but he still was trying to say something that he thought had intellectual value and that should be influential. However, he didn't have the slightest means verifying his hypothesis, and that's the problem.

As for Freud's legacy, I think it largely brought about vastly more suffering than it brought about truth and most of his ideas have been thoroughly discredited. He is however still popular in the wider culture, and he still has devotees that need to be discredited as well.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

"However, he didn't have the slightest means verifying his hypothesis, and that's the problem. "

It's not as simple as that. At the time he wrote, it was widely accepted that the development of a "civilized" human was analagous to the development of cutures/societies. To some extent, he was drawing on his own psychological understandings of childhood development (and anthropological data on groups like Australian Aborigines) to inform his theories about social and cultural evolution. Such theories and approaches are no longer credible, but it's not fair to judge him via today's understandings.

Some of his insights into the family are valuable (take of the sex out of Freud, and had some shrewd sociological ideas). His ideas about cultural evolution and modern societies haven't stood up all that well, but he was certainly relevant in his time. And most of his popular reputation is for his pure psychology – I've been talking about his more sociological-philosophical writings, which his isn't as widely known for. (if you haven't read Civilizations and its Discontents, you should.)

TedTylerEzro

"Such theories and approaches are no longer credible, but it's not fair to judge him via today's understandings."

I'm not criticizing the man (though I could… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Eckstein) but his method of analyzing the world and the way human beings think. I'm also afraid that I have to disagree with your opinion of his sociological ideas but then I'm not to fond of the state of the disciplines of anthropology and sociology at present. It needs the revolution that psychology got with the development of the neurological sciences to make it more credible. A worthy discipline for study, but a flawed methodology.

Dot

HELL!! 'n READY!!

“Energy Superpower!”, hear me roar
Emissions too big to ignore
And I earn too much to go back an' pretend
'cause I've heard it all before
NEP put me down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna keep me down again

CHORUS
Oh yes I am wise
But it's wisdom born of sands
Yes, you'll pay the price
But look how much I gained
If I want to, I can spew anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
Superpower!

We can spin, and never brake me
Prentice only serves to make me
More determined to delay the final goal
And I come back even stronger
No “gas jockey” any longer
'cause you've deepened our dependence now on coal.

CHORUS

Mulletaur

Nice one, Dot.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

Nice, Dot.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

Nice work!

[youtube bmExAiCcaPk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmExAiCcaPk youtube]

Dot

I think I'll stick to one liners in the future.

Something happened between now and when Eric Reguly first wrote a column on this Nov 2006 (A superpower? Try gas jockey ), and it was further discussed in a paper , Oct 2007 and conference for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute Canada as the “Emerging Energy Superpower”:Testing the Case
http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/Canada%20as%20The%20Emer…

that largely went unreported: We emerged! We are now a bonafide "energy superpower", according to recent quotes from Harper and Prentice. I wonder when Congress gave them permission?

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

What "average?" I'm asking for evidence that any member of the Obama cabinet or any official at any U.S. government department — besides those whose job it is to blow sunshine up Canadian asses — believes, or has even heard of, the Harper government's ludicrous contention that there is something called a "continental approach to energy and the environment." But keep trying.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

What "average?" I'm asking for evidence that any member of the Obama cabinet or any official at any U.S. government department — besides those whose job it is to blow sunshine up Canadian asses — believes, or has even heard of, the Harper government's ludicrous contention that there is something called a "continental approach to energy and the environment." But keep trying.
http://intensedebate.com/people/George_Pringle George_Pringle

If the Greenpeacers and environmentalists had not stopped us from building plenty of nuclear power plants then we would have means of replacing coals plants and other big energy producing sources.

Dot

Sadly [US Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu -- Nobel Prize winner in Physics and Obama's Secretary of Energy] is keen on nuclear and sees the only obstacle being the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. He also talked about carbon capture and storage, something he admitted might never be commercially viable. In reviewing countries doing work in this area, he made no reference to Canada.

E May blog from Copanhagen
http://greenparty.ca/blogs/7/2009-12-13/sunday-up…

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

You've got an undergrad degree in sociology and anthropology too?

Have you actually read any Freud?

TedTylerEzro

Actually, I do in a way. I'm a philosophy/comparative religion with double honours guy. I got Freud's Totem and Taboo essays in a comparative religion classes, along with Weber, Durkheim, Marx, etc. In philosophy I concentrated on classical and scholastic philosophy (particularly anything following in Aristotle's footsteps) and in comparative religion I concentrated on western religions. Then I got a minor in classical and medieval history.

So concentration on Medieval Scholasticism with a broad fan to reach requirements on everything around it. Then, since I'd rather slam my testicles in a door than pursue a life in humanities academia, I worked for awhile before returning to school to study computer science. It is proving to be far more difficult than my arts degree was, though symbolic logic helped me get solid on mathematical principles that eluded me in high school.

So that's my academic history, so take whatever I say in that context.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

It is proving to be far more difficult than my arts degree was

I know at least five people with experiences similar to yours. The transition from humanities to sciences can be jarring, at first. One is forced to use parts of one's brain that have become completely stagnant.
http://intensedebate.com/people/madeyoulook madeyoulook

Why do I get the feeling there is actually one individual in all of human history who has followed the life path you describe?

As to the door slamming in sensitive areas, I have but one question: what were you thinking when you signed up in the first place?

TedTylerEzro

I've known other philosophy/comparative religion types before. Granted, they concentrated on eastern religions for comparative religion, and read Chomsky, Derrida, Camus and Satre on the philosophy side.

As for what I was thinking? Not much, I just took what was interesting to me as a 20 year old without ambition or plans for the future. As I delved deeper into academia's heart of I darkness, I saw the horror… the horror…

http://intensedebate.com/people/Style Style

Give him time, he's probably just nervous – he doesn't often talk to Americans.
Holly Stick

Prentice was on The current recently and basically said they couldnd't do anything until they knew what the Americanss were doing. He did not actually say "We are waiting for our orders from Washington" but he might as well have.