[Plantagenet]

NPR just broadcast an interesting interview with Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman.

daniel-kahneman-on-misery-memory-and-our-understanding-of-the-mind

He makes the point that global warming is exactly the kind of threat that most human minds will find a way to ignore.....there is controversy about it and something needs to be done now to avoid pain later on,

Kahneman's Nobel Prize winning research is all about how most people don't do a very good job of evaluating the trade offs between making sacrifices now to make things better down the line...... Most people live moment to moment and seek out immediate gratification---delaying gratification is a step beyond what they can do. Its no surprise he is very pessimistic about the abilities of modern democracies to make hard decisions to do something now that impacts most people---like institute a carbon tax---to avert problems with climate change that won't impact most people for years to decades into the future.

Cheers!

[yellowcanoe]

Kahneman's Nobel Prize winning research is all about how most people don't do a very good job of evaluating the trade offs between making sacrifices now to make things better down the line...... Most people live moment to moment and seek out immediate gratification---delaying gratification is a step beyond what they can do.

If anything, we're getting worse at this. I believe that people where I live (Ontario) used to believe in balanced budgets and paying off debt. That constituency seems vanishingly small now and we only seem to be able to support political parties that want to either continue to borrow and spend, or to reduce taxes (more instant gratification) and spending. The prudent thing would be to increase taxes and reduce spending so we could balance the budget and start running surpluses to pay off the massive amount of accumulated debt that we have but of course that would require sacrifice now to create a better future.

[Plantagenet]

Kahneman's Nobel Prize winning research is all about how most people don't do a very good job of evaluating the trade offs between making sacrifices now to make things better down the line...... Most people live moment to moment and seek out immediate gratification---delaying gratification is a step beyond what they can do.

If anything, we're getting worse at this. I believe that people where I live (Ontario) used to believe in balanced budgets and paying off debt. That constituency seems vanishingly small now and we only seem to be able to support political parties that want to either continue to borrow and spend, or to reduce taxes (more instant gratification) and spending. The prudent thing would be to increase taxes and reduce spending so we could balance the budget and start running surpluses to pay off the massive amount of accumulated debt that we have but of course that would require sacrifice now to create a better future.

Yup. You are exactly right on that.

There is often a lack of ability to plan and make provision now for events that will happen later on an individual level in people's personal lives---and we are seeing this mentality writ large in our dysfunctional politics.

This seems to be a serious flaw inherent in democracies....its hard to get people to make sacrifices for the future. The politician brave enough to ask for higher taxes for the common good or for long range planning to ameliorate climate change doesn't seem to win the elections anymore. Even things like infrastructure spending which you'd think would be based on long-range planning for society's good just turn into anther "instant gratification" boondoggle, like Obama's 800 Billion "infrastructure stimulus" spending that didn't actually build any major infrastructure, and now Trump's "infrastructure" spending plan that does't actually involve much government spending on building infrastructure.

Climate change is inherently a problem in the future---so politicians don't give a damn and don't take actual steps that address the problem. Sham agreements like the Paris Accords that actually allow INCREASES in CO2 emissions are passed off as the solution to the problem, when actually they are ex BAU. And most people just want it all to go away.

Cheers!

[ozcad]

Voltaire said "As long as there are rogues and fools, there will be religious."
One could unkindly say that in politics there are only rogues and fools. The rogues hatch the corrupt schemes which for a time deceive the fools (good guys), who are therefore always playing catch-up as the scheme must always precede its discovery.
Rogues misrepresent things and situations to their advantage. Fools believe these assertions, unaware of their recruitment, blaming its cost onto others.
All of them are seeking short-term advantage, discounting the future to their long-term cost.

[jedrider]

LIke that Miami FIU pedestrian bridge that collapsed on the thoroughfare, most people are content with using the structure and not how it works.

[dohboi]

Plant wrote: " The new vegetation effectively acts as a natural snow fence, protecting snow from the wind and resulting in thicker winter snowpack and warmer tundra soils year round."

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that particular connection, even though it happens every winter in my front yard planted with native plants!

Adam, you sound like an optimist. I like optimists! Here are some articles to make you happy!:


https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/j ... nmentalism?

http://progressandperil.com/2018/02/23/ ... f-climate/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYOKMUTTDdA

[vtsnowedin]

Spring equinox today. Temp +19 F snow pack 30 inches. Sunny.

[dohboi]

Did you get walloped by all those nordeasters? Is another on its way?

[vtsnowedin]

Did you get walloped by all those nordeasters? Is another on its way?

The first two just grazed me with a few inches each but the third one hung around for a day and a half and dumped two feet of snow on me. It looks like the next one will pass me by and that is fine by me. My buddies down near Boston took it hard all three times and are going to get it again.

[dohboi]

Yeah, it sounds like the Boston area, one of my old stomping grounds, really got hit badly. During the decade I lived there (basically the '80s), it seemed to me that we only got an inch or two at a time, and that usually all melted shortly thereafter. I have friends who just moved there after living in various parts of the South all their lives, and they're pretty freaked out.

Glad to hear you missed the worst of the first two! Hang in there.

[vtsnowedin]

Yeah, it sounds like the Boston area, one of my old stomping grounds, really got hit badly. During the decade I lived there (basically the '80s), it seemed to me that we only got an inch or two at a time, and that usually all melted shortly thereafter. I have friends who just moved there after living in various parts of the South all their lives, and they're pretty freaked out.

Glad to hear you missed the worst of the first two! Hang in there.

I've used about five gallons of diesel fuel plowing the snow but other then that it hasn't bothered me a bit. I don't have to commute to work so a snow day isn't much different than a clear day. Snow in March is business as usual here.

[dohboi]

In Minnesota, March is historically our snowiest month. We'll see if that norm holds going forward. We were supposed to get a few inches here in Minneapolis tonight through tomorrow morning, but it looks like that storm is now going to stay to our West a bit. All in all, it's been a rather dry March, at least the for the last couple weeks.

[vtsnowedin]

April 3rd.2018 33F snow flurries just started. The slope behind the house (East facing) is about seventy percent bare ground with the snow patches about a foot deep. More snow in the north facing hardwoods and less in the sunny fields. Maple sap was running today. Pretty much normal for the day of the year if anything a bit more snow cover then average. The runaway global warming may have arrived somewhere but not here, at least not yet.

[dohboi]

We're likely to see record cold temps in Minnesota tonight/tomorrow morning, part of a weird, long, late-spring cold snap. I haven't kept track of what's happening up there as closely as I should, but I'm guessing this is part of a new pattern known as 'WACCy'--Warm Arctic-Cold Continents--where warm air intruding into the Arctic pushes cold air deep into the North American and Eurasian continents. Eurasia got the cold a few weeks ago; this time it seems to be hitting us.

[dohboi]

Another specific item to add to your exacerbating ('positive') feeback list:

Africa’s vegetation has lost 2.6bn tonnes of CO2 in just seven years

https://www.carbonbrief.org/africas-veg ... even-years

The rainforests, savannahs and woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa have lost around 2.6bn tonnes of CO2 over the past seven years, a new study finds.
The large-scale loss of stored carbon – which on an annual basis is almost four times the CO2 emissions of Nigeria – was driven by a series of severe droughts across the continent, as well as deforestation, the research suggests...

See also:

http://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0530-6

[jawagord]

Runaway Global Warming? Time to change the thread headline to the more ambiguous Climate Change? Normally we would be getting rain in April and the farmers would be seeding. This year the fields are still covered in snow and more is falling.

Winter drags on as more snowfall warnings issued for Calgary, southwest Alberta
Monday morning commuters will have to contend with a 10 to 20 centimetre dump of heavy, wet snow, Environment Canada warned on Sunday afternoon, with snowfall beginning Sunday evening and tapering off Monday night. The agency warned that rapidly accumulating snow could make travel difficult and reduce visibility.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/a ... -1.4620971

Calgary could see a month’s worth of snow in just over 24 hours

https://globalnews.ca/news/4146213/calg ... -24-hours/

[ralfy]

Runaway Global Warming? Time to change the thread headline to the more ambiguous Climate Change? Normally we would be getting rain in April and the farmers would be seeding. This year the fields are still covered in snow and more is falling.

Winter drags on as more snowfall warnings issued for Calgary, southwest Alberta
Monday morning commuters will have to contend with a 10 to 20 centimetre dump of heavy, wet snow, Environment Canada warned on Sunday afternoon, with snowfall beginning Sunday evening and tapering off Monday night. The agency warned that rapidly accumulating snow could make travel difficult and reduce visibility.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/a ... -1.4620971

Calgary could see a month’s worth of snow in just over 24 hours

https://globalnews.ca/news/4146213/calg ... -24-hours/

What is the difference between weather and climate?

Why Global Warming Can Mean Harsher Winter Weather

[jawagord]

Sorry Ralfy, trotting out the "warmer can mean colder" meme to explain away unusually cold weather gets a little old after 20 years! At some point it should become obvious that weather and climate are chaotic and non-linear and not controlled by CO2 emissions.

[dohboi]

jaw, it's not called 'local warming,' it's called 'Global Warming.'

If you want to make assumptions about what is happening on the entire globe based on your perception of what is happening in your little neck of the woods...well, have a lot of fun with your parochialism.

Here's what's happening with actual global trends, you might start here:



(double click and choose 'view image' if you can't see the whole graph)

[Newfie]

Sorry Ralfy, trotting out the "warmer can mean colder" meme to explain away unusually cold weather gets a little old after 20 years! At some point it should become obvious that weather and climate are chaotic and non-linear and not controlled by CO2 emissions.

It’s chaotic and non-linear but drifting in a definit direction. You’ve been hearing about it for 20 years because that’s how long it’s been going on.

Try looking up Jennifer Francis and watching one or two of her videos. She is generally addressing a crowd of meteorologist but you should be able to follow her gist.