michael tobis
illconsidered | May 9, 2011Forced climate change causes global warming as a response, not the other way around.
We all focus on globally and seasonally averaged mean temperature, and though it is a very coarse measure, there are some justifiable reasons. But as a general focus for those concerned about the human influence on our planetary life support system, is it right?
Michael Tobis has a great essay on why it really isn't. If the sentence above doesn't quite get the point across, from the same paragraph:
It takes a hell of a kick to move global temperature as much as we are moving it, and the climate system is…
illconsidered | July 14, 2010Check out this interesting essay from Michael Tobis.
Though I am not sure that the solution he hopes for matches the problem as he describes it. Isn't he suggesting we (climate solution advocates) need to come up with our own "New Coke" despite the debacle that proved to be for Coca Cola Co in the eighties?
illconsidered | March 19, 2009If tribal cultures could consider the seventh generation, we with our much greater power should be considering the seventieth. The thirty year horizon that economists and politicians consider very long range is just a blink in the geological history of our planet. Now that we dominate surface processes of the earth we have taken over the responsibility for its sustenance. Our obligation to our descendants and our world doesn't end when the discount rate kicks in.
That's Michel Tobis
Believe in something! Even if it's wrong, believe in it.
That's Glenn Beck.
Sometimes being ridiculed is…
illconsidered | February 21, 2009Michael Tobis has another well written and thought provoking essay on In It for the Gold asking if continuing developments in climatology are going to affect mitigation policy.
It can be argued that climatology is not an important input into climate change related policy. It is premature to take climatological input into account in adaptation strategy, while on the other hand as far as mitigation goes (i.e., on the global scale) the picture has pretty much stayed about the same for some substantial time.
That idea does not fit in very well with the common denialist refrain that climatologists…