Yes, I know most of my posts deal with the Boston office market. And I appreciate all of your who have followed me, corrected me, encouraged me, and made this all fun. I've been in a bit of a pause--call it an extended start to the New Year. So forgive me if I start my going astray again. I had to.
Kerry Emanuel ("Climate Changes are proven fact," Boston Globe, February 15) is obviously passionate in his beliefs about climate change. But what are we to make of his statement that "We have never before dealt with a problem that threatens not us, but our distant descendants?" The statement is ludicrous and typical of single-issue thinkers.
Never before? What about the nuclear arms race? I would consider that a problem that might affect our descendants. What about the increasing discrepancy in incomes worldwide? What about families in our inner cities for whom the only "job" that keeps people fed is the drug trade? What of their descendants? What of the growing chasm between the Islamic and Western worlds? Are the Taliban not a threat to our descendants? What about the state of public education right here in Massachusetts? Shall we put climate change in front of ignorance as a future threat? What about AIDS, human rights, child slavery? We have limited resources to deal with the many, many threats to our descendants. Does Emanuel truly believe that we must put his climate change crisis first on the list when, as he admits in his own article, there are simply too many factors to state fact when it comes to climate change? Which makes me wonder where he came up with the title.
I apologize. I'll get back to real estate. But as I see it, people working, people learning, people that are healthy, people that feel secure and safe, all create the world in which people like me are incredibly fortunate to play a small role in. There wouldn't be much need for office space in any other kind of a world.
Monday, February 15, 2010
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You write:
ReplyDelete"The statement is ludicrous and typical of single-issue thinkers."
That's an interesting statement to make about Kerry Emanuel known for being an exceptional "multi-issue" thinker. See his website for instance: http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/home.html, his multi-disciplinary book, "Divine Wind: The history and science of hurricanes", and his article in the Boston Review in 2007, "Phaeton’s Reins, The human hand in climate change." http://e-courses.cerritos.edu/tstolze/Kerry%20Emanuel_%20Phaeton's%20Reins.pdf
If you are interested, give him a call at MIT and ask him to clarify his statement for you.
JThomas:
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comments and advice. I have not read Professor Emanuel's full book, "The Divine Hand", but I am familiar with his position papers. Let me quote directly from his position paper entitled "Anthropogenic Effects on Tropical Cyclone Activity," which was revised in 2006. The opening took the form of a question and answer and I appreciated the honesty. But it's that honesty that keeps getting in the way of conclusions. I refer to question 6.
6. Q: "You say that reliable records of hurricane wind speeds go back only to about 1950, so how can you say that there were not even more intense storms before 1950? How can you assert that the upswing in the last 50 years is a consequence of global warming?
A: We cannot say for sure. What we can say is that everywhere we have looked, the change in hurricane energy consumption follows very closely the change in tropical sea surface temperature. When the sea surface temperature falls, the energy consumption falls, and conversely, when it rises, so too does the energy consumption. Both theory and models of hurricane intensity predict that this should be so as well. In contrast to the hurricane record, the record of tropical ocean temperature is less prone to error and goes back 150 years or so. Moreover, geochemical methods have been developed to infer sea surface temperature from corals and from the shells left behind by micro-organisms that live near the surface; these can be used to estimate sea surface temperature for the past several thousand years. These records strongly suggest that the 0.5 degree centigrade (1 degree Fahrenheit) warming of the tropical oceans we have seen in the past 50 years is unprecedented for perhaps as long as a few thousand years. Scientists who work on these records therefore believe that the recent increase is anthropogenic."
3 points: 1,000 years is, on the scale of both human existence and planetary existence a blip. Calling a 1 degree F increase in temperature over the past 50 years as "unprecedented" is merely a guess. Since Emanuel stretches his 1000 years to a random couple of thousand years in this sentence, he still comes up a bit short for "unprecedented."
Please don't misunderstand me. I love the science. I love what Emanuel is doing. But science is slow-going and must be subject to the most rigorous testing and, to the limits we have, proof. There is still no statistically significant link between human activity and climate change. The National Sciences Foundation has said as much. They also said that human action IS a statistically proven case of air pollution and its attendant illnesses, such as lung cancer. I don't understand why we need to take a "believe it or be damned" approach to climate change when the same effects would be accomplished if accomplished men such as Emanuel simply said, "if we don't stop our activities, more people will die of cancer and the rise in childhood asthman would continue."
Would you not agreet that the measures taken to combat air pollution would, in the long run, accomplish the very same objectives you seek in climate change.
And finally, I will go back to my original points in my post yesterday. We live in a world of limited financial and political resources. Perspective is key. The recent attacks and counterattacks on the study of climate change are not scientific. They are political. And nobody will give a damn as long as this is the case.
I live near the Salem Power plant that spews forth toxic particles into the air we breathe. This is from burning coal, and it is happening all over the world.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Salem plant was bought out of bankruptcy, the owners should have been forced to convert to natural gas. No political will.
Whether climate change is real or not, I believe is irrelevant. All of the things we should be doing for other reasons -
Energy independence
price stability
jobs in USA
pollution reduction
etc.
- will ultimately cut our emissions of CO2.
How so,
Nuclear power
decentralized wind and solar
natural gas
hydro / ocean power
geothermal
electric cars
See, it is just that easy.......
Scooby,
ReplyDeleteYou're on my track again. I don't understand why we don't simply focus on what we know is harming us right now--the Salem plant for example--and stop trying to force feed everybody on climate change. Solving the former takes care of the latter. And yes, I am all for nuclear, wind, solar, natural gas, the works. Except for electric cars. Reading about huge advances in the gas combustion engine that will eliminate that industry, and cleanly. Check out the Daimler website.
"We have never before dealt with a problem that threatens not us, but our distant descendants?"
ReplyDelete"Never before? What about the nuclear arms race? I would consider that a problem that might affect our descendants."
Affect our descendants? Of course! Affect not us? No, it affects us right now too and affected us in the past too.
"What about the increasing discrepancy in incomes worldwide? What about families in our inner cities for whom the only "job" that keeps people fed is the drug trade? What of their descendants? What of the growing chasm between the Islamic and Western worlds? Are the Taliban not a threat to our descendants? What about the state of public education right here in Massachusetts? Shall we put climate change in front of ignorance as a future threat? What about AIDS, human rights, child slavery? We have limited resources to deal with the many, many threats to our descendants"
Those ones threaten *both* us (as in all of us alive today) *and* our descendants, so "a problem that threatens not us, but our distant descendants" doesn't apply to them.