[NY_USA_Hacker]

Again, I saw nothing at your URL negative about Exxon.

Your claim that three energy industry executives make more money than all the climate science research is likely false: A research grant in science to a research professor goes for about $500,000 a year. The university grabs about 60% for 'overhead' (help support the English department, etc.). The rest covers or helps cover the prof, travel, photocopying, lab equipment, grad students, etc. Add up 100 such profs and have $50 million a year.

But nearly all the Fortune 500 CEOs are just hired managers and, surprisingly, are not so well paid if only because typically they don't last more then 5 years as CEO. So, maybe they make $10 million a year, for a few years; then they don't go start again in the mail room and, instead, just retire. After the taxes, considering how few years they were CEO and long they might continue to live, a guy who owns, say, 10 McDonald's can do better if only because he can keep his business for decades.

So, for your three CEOs you are up to maybe $30 million which is less than the $50 million for the profs.

Sure, a given CEO might some year cash in some stock options and make $50 million, but that's a one-time thing.

Instead of such salaries, the big bucks are from owning something not worth much and then making it valuable. Why? Because only a tiny fraction of the people can evaluate the tree that might grow from a seed or help such a seed grow to a tree. E.g., relevant here on HN, there's hardly a single venture partner anywhere in the US who will even try to evaluate the chances of a particular project becoming another Google. Instead, for any investment amount enough to support a few people for a few years, say, over $1 million, they will invest in something simple such as 'traction' and do so on the basis if the track record of 'traction'. For 'another Google', they will be happy if it happened but will make no effort toward that goal. So, entrepreneurs such as discussed on HN some hedge fund managers, especially J. Simons, can make much more. On all of Wall Street, there is exactly one person who understands what Renaissance Technologies does and has good reason to know why it makes money: Simons. Period.

But, that some oil company executives are making money says nothing about global warming or really that Exxon is funding FUD.

A lot of the global warming hysteria is from stimulating the desire of people to have a religion. With the major organized religions in decline, Communism, global warming, etc. can find some fertile ground.

There is also general paranoia such as made the morality plays popular going way back in the history of 'story telling'.

"All this said, though, perhaps the bigger question is: what would convince you that global warming is a big problem and that it's being caused by people?"

Right, that's the bigger question. The answer is simple and the same for global warming, climate change, dying of anthrax, having Yellowstone blow again and put a layer of ash 10 feet thick over much of the US, have the earth hit by an asteroid, etc. Same for all of them: Look for good data and good arguments, especially good science.

E.g., for the asteroids, yes, the various belts of asteroids are unstable so at any time a bump can cause an asteroid to leave the belt and head for earth. Right. So, for a fairly good first cut, dangerous asteroids will arrive like a Poisson process. But we have a very good estimate of the arrival time: The rate is less than once per 65 million years. So, for the next few years, the probability is tiny. And that's why I don't worry about asteroids.

For anthrax, we have good public health data and we understand anthrax. So, for my life in the burbs, no worries, mate.

Etc.

For global warming and climate change, the data is total BS, and the science is worse. So, flush it. No worries, mate.

Easy enough.

Done.

For you, again, relax.

[leot]

Prefacing everything with "good" makes it easy to dismiss whatever you want. Greater specificity is likely necessary here, assuming objectivity is the goal.

Anyhow, I don't know why you would put a prof's compensation at $500k because you're including all the people s/he pays, and then not do the same for the executive.

As for CEOs of the biggest oil firms:

ExxonMobil: CEO:~$30 million http://people.forbes.com/profile/rex-w-tillerson/31576

Some other guy: $13.5 million http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/officerProfile?symbol=...

Chevron: ~$16 million http://people.forbes.com/profile/john-s-watson/18163

So, say $60 million -- and that's just three dudes. They're earning the equivalent of 500 climate scientists compensated at $120k/year.

Say, what do you figure the probability is that you're wrong?

[NY_USA_Hacker]

Some qualification such as "good" is just crucial. Similarly for 'significant'. Otherwise, light a match and warm the planet. Warm it? Sure. Significantly? No. For global warming data, there's all sorts of crapola, fixed up with Finkel's Fudge Factor, smoothed, filtered, collected from unspecified places by unclear means, etc. E.g., there is tree ring data which is very crude and next to useless for discussing global warming.

For the $500 K per year per prof in field and experimental science, that's not their "compensation". The $120 K a year you mentioned is closer. My $10 million was within the ballpark, within a factor of only 2 from the data you found. Next, the CEO salaries have nothing to do with global warming or climate change.

An great example of bad data is Al Guru's movie. Again, he blew the Vostok ice core data and neglected to note that the CO2 increases were hundreds of years after the temperature increases. So, clearly CO2 did not cause the temperature increases.

Al Guru's pictures of polar bears and glaciers are meaningless and not "good" data. Similarly for his observation of snows on Kilimanjaro. So, Guru wanted to bring in lots of anecdotal this and that instead of what is clearly the crucial measure for global warming -- temperature, just temperature.

The bad data and analysis goes on and on. Guru is trying to make money (he has), be famous (he is), and push his favorite project, scaring people about global warming. It's likely a religious thing with him, considering his background. Whatever his motives are, his evidence and arguments are BS.

For the IPCC, it's really no better. 'Radiative forcing' is total made up crack pot BS. Really the IPCC is about getting 'carbon credit' transfer payments from wealthy countries to poor ones.

Yet the global warming people want us to go to electric power at the plant from about 2 cents per KWH to about 50 cents, convert to electric cars for which there are no feasible batteries for how the vast majority of cars are used, even to convert long haul trucks to batteries which is absurd, and on and on. It's the same as the Mayan priests killing people to pour their blood on rocks to keep the sun moving across the sky.

Just what is it about total BS crapola you find so attractive? Dump it. Flush it. F'get about it.

[leot]

Are you still trying to determine what the probability is that you're wrong? Because that didn't make it into your response. I know I'm not 100% certain.

The point I was making about salaries dealt with the size of the vested interests and the financial means of those involved to protect them.

"The global warming people" (???) really? 2 cents to 50 -- are you presenting these numbers in good faith? Anyhow, lots of "them" also think nuclear power is fine too (or should I say "Them", because it's much better to think in terms of nefarious monolithic demonizable opponents, far more productive and likely to lead to smart outcomes). It seems the estimate of "$0.50/kwh was, at the very least, on the high end. Some estimates put solar at $0.12/kwh by 2015 (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-06/10/content_126... -- btw, these citation things are awfully handy. You should really try them out some time. Say what you like about the nefarious "Them", They are pretty into the whole being-scholarly thing.)

Also, I'd say the bulk of climate change advocates think that the best gains can be achieved through conservation. There are lots of ways of living ones life that require way less resources. I mean, it's a pretty arbitrary decision whether to be into NASCAR or the Tour de France, into motor boat racing or sailing, into massive low-pro-tire pick-up trucks or a sport sedan.

[NY_USA_Hacker]

"References"? Sure, they're crucial. I'm just awash in references on global warming.

But this discussion does not come up to the level of seriousness for me to go to my directory of global warming information and pull up references and details.

The 50 US cents per KWh at the plant is okay: That's ballpark what the total cost has been in Germany that tried hard with subsidies to get farmers to install solar panels.

Sure, people can keep working on solar, wind, low head hydro, etc. power and hope to get the cost down to 20 cents or so, etc.

Still solar and wind are total made up nonsense, wind likely for centuries, and solar at least for decades. A big, huge problem is that those sources are unpredictable so need storage, and the cheap storage is not available. So, basically have to pay the CapEx twice. That is, have to pay for a coal plant to use when the wind is not blowing. Then the coal plant operator will have to raise his rates to cover his CapEx for the time his plant is not operating. Bummer.

On average in the US, at the plant, nukes have been under 2 cents per KWh and coal has been under 3 cents. In comparison, the dreams of the people pushing 'clean, renewable' energy would shoot the US economy in the gut.

For the probability, that's a silly issue: The Mayan priests who killed people to pour blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky (I have a reference to a scholarly book on the Mayans, and Google books or Amazon shows the page with the specifics) picked a good problem: The Mayans didn't know enough to debunk the priests.

Al Guru did the same: Solid science for what the climate will be in 50 years under various scenarios for human activity does not exist. In particular, about the only way we know to calculate the 'climate' is from 'first principles' of physics and chemistry, and that involves actually predicting the weather, each cubic millimeter or so, INCLUDING the oceans, all over the planet for each millisecond or so for 50 years, and we can't do that computing. [Note: All simplifications are not from first principles and are approximations of unknown accuracy. So, can't actually calculate all the clouds in detail, put in a simple model for the clouds; for the oceans, do something still simpler.]

Then for the 'climate', need to do the full calculation, do that computing for a narrow distribution of initial conditions around the conditions now. Big problem: We don't even know the initial conditions, e.g., in the depths of the oceans and their currents, accurately. Anyway, run the weather prediction a few million times and then take empirical distributions and find the climate. Then change the scenario of human activity, do it again, and compare.

Tough to do. Hasn't been done.

Similarly for a gamma ray burst blowing the atmosphere off the earth, Yellowstone wiping out much of the US, a moving black hole sucking up the earth, some microbe we don't know how to kill wiping out humanity, etc.

So, what do we do? Well, we do NOT fall for superstition and gurus like the Mayans did. We don't go for morality plays about evil humans with transgression from evil, retribution from an angry god, and redemption from sacrifice. We don't sacrifice lambs or virgins. And we don't sacrifice our coal plants, half of our electric power.

For 'global warming', first, we look at the arguments of Al Guru, Guru Ramaswamy, etc., move forward to their first absurd, outrageous, egregious, grotesquely incompetent and/or dishonest point and then flush their arguments and reject those gurus. For Al Guru, the time between the high temperatures and the high CO2 levels he didn't show in the Vostok data is enough to flush his stuff. For the IPCC and Guru Ramaswami, his 'radiative forcing' is enough to flush.

So, for the alarmists, we have nothing but superstition.

So, we have to proceed on our own.

So, we start: Is there any empirical evidence that the earth is getting warmer now? We can measure temperature with astounding accuracy, and now with satellites we can get good data for the whole planet, day by day. May I have the envelope, please? "Nope, there's no evidence."

For a little more, as far as we can tell (I'm sure you have the NAS report), the temperature now is exactly the same as it was before the start of the Little Ice Age caused, maybe, by missing sun spots for some decades. So, since then we've been pulling out of the Little Ice Age and, net, since just before the Little Ice Age, all of human activity has had zip, zilch, zero effect on temperature. Net, human caused global warming doesn't pass the sniff test.

Next, what about the science? Do we worry about CO2, methane, water vapor, chlorinated hydrocarbons, aerosols? First- cut, changes in any of these seem to be at most small and trivial.

Next, what is the record on climate variability? Well, there's been a lot of variability. So, that we see nothing going on now means, first-cut, no worries, mate.

Next, if there we do begin to see some changes, then we will address the issue again.

The idea that the climate is wildly 'unstable' (got'a stop those evil butterflies from flapping their wings) and that we are at a tipping point and point of no return, with no good evidence, we have to pass off as superstitious nonsense like the Mayans.

Net, we're not Mayans. We don't wreck our society for superstitious fears. We just don't do that.

No sale. Ain't buying.

Done.

[leot]

So, what's your response to, say:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co...

?

[NY_USA_Hacker]

The whole page is just about 'energy balance', and that fails as soon as there is any significant change. E.g., as there is any significant warming, there may be more water vapor and clouds, and clouds may reflect more sunlight and tend to cool the earth. So, no way can we use such an energy balance calculation to discuss significant changes in temperature over decades, as the alarmists want to predict. So, right away it's time to start flushing their stuff. That is, even if the energy balance calculation is correct, then it says what will happen over, say, tomorrow.

The 'radiative forcing' term was not well defined and, as I recall, nothing like what Ramaswami explained in the main, relevant IPCC document. Ramaswami's stuff was junk, but the usage at the Web page seems better but a long way from good.

That a 30% increase in CO2 concentration leads to an increase of 3 degrees C is tough to swallow: CO2 absorbs such a small amount of energy, especially after what would be absorbed by water vapor, methane, etc. Also, I'd want to see that CO2 calculation in detail, e.g., in terms of the CO2 spectral lines and the radiation from the surface of the earth. Also the page mentioned 'saturation': They didn't say just what they meant, but a guess is that some gas is asborbing all it can. They didn't say how close CO2 is to 'saturation'. My guess is that CO2 is close to saturation now. I'd want to see some details.

At one point they want to refer to 'sophisticated global climate models': That's easy -- it's the empty set.

In places their writing tries to be a snow job, e.g., using undefined acronyms.

They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.

Generally, though, the stuff from Al Guru and the IPCC (Tom Friedman is MUCH worse) is so bad that I lost patience with this stuff: The whole thing is at least 99 44/100% flim flam fraud deceptive manipulation,