Are humans contributing to global warming?

I believe that humans are contributing to global warming. This post is a collection of reasons and quotes to support my belief.

A. Industrial human activities release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
B. The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere affect the temperature on Earth
C. The temperature on Earth is increasing faster now than any other time in human history

A. Industrial human activities release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
1. "Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years." (Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers)

David Attenborough:
2. "When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years." (Climate change is the major challenge facing the world, The Independent, 2006)

Rebecca Lindsey:
3. "Based on air bubbles trapped in mile-thick ice cores and other paleoclimate evidence, we know that during the ice age cycles of the past million years or so, atmospheric carbon dioxide never exceeded 300 ppm. Before the Industrial Revolution started in the mid-1700s, atmospheric carbon dioxide was 280 ppm or less." (Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, 2024)

B. The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere affect the temperature on Earth

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
4. "Without the natural greenhouse effect, the average temperature at Earth's surface would be below the freezing point of water. Thus, Earth's natural greenhouse effect makes life as we know it possible." (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, FAQ 1.3 What is the Greenhouse Effect?)

U.S. Energy Information Administration:

5. "When sunlight strikes the Earth's surface, some of it radiates back toward space as infrared radiation (heat). Greenhouse gases absorb this infrared radiation and trap its heat in the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect that results in global warming and climate change." (Energy and the environment explained, Greenhouse gases, June 2014)

C. The temperature of Earth is increasing faster now than any other time in human history

Barack Obama:

6. "2014 was the planet's warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn't make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century." (State of the Union Address, 2015)

World Meteorological Organization, United Nations:

7. "The global average temperature in 2022 is estimated to be about 1.15 (1.02 to 1.28) °C above the 1850-1900 average." (Eight warmest years on record witness upsurge in climate change impacts, 2022)

Fundamentals of phenomenology

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This post is a collection of quotes about phenomenology. There are 22 quotes divided into 9 sections. The painting above is by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino titled Metal Plate with Peaches and Vine Leaves (1594).

A. Phenomenology is the study of immediate perception (3)
B. All knowledge begins with phenomenology (2)
C. Direct perception in the present moment is fact (1)
D. Memory is a bookcase that we can grab knowledge from (2)
E. The six main senses are vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell and thought (3)
F. Most thoughts mimic the other five senses (2)
G. Reality is full of details (3)
H. Reality is full of potential concepts (3)
I. The feeling of good is mysterious (3)

A. Phenomenology is the study of immediate perception

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914, philosopher):
1. "That artist's observational power is what is most wanted in the study of phenomenology." (Pragmatism and Pragmaticism, 1903)

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938, philosopher):
2. "To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness." (Brainyquote.com)

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938, philosopher):
3. "A new fundamental science, pure phenomenology, has developed within philosophy: this is a science of a thoroughly new type and endless scope. It is inferior in methodological rigor to none of the modern sciences." (Pure Phenomenology, 1917)

B. All knowledge begins with phenomenology

William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882, economist):
4. "In a certain sense all knowledge is inductive. We can only learn the laws and relations of things in nature by observing those things." (The Principles of Science, 1874)

Simone Weil (1909-1943, philosopher):
5. "Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies." (Reflections on the right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God)

C. Direct perception in the present moment is fact

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873, economist):
6. "Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels." (A System of Logic, 1843)

D. Memory is a bookcase that we can grab knowledge from

Philip Roth  (1933-2018, novelist):
7. "Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts." (The Facts: A Novelist's  Autobiography, 1988)

Henri Bergson (1859-1941, philosopher)
8. "Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity." (An Introduction to Metaphysics, 1903)

E. The six senses are vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell and thought

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519, artist):
9. "The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen." (Quoted by The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Rudolf Flesch)

Michel Foucault (1926-1984, philosopher):
10. "The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor." (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 1970)

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976, philosopher):
11. "We ourselves are the entities to be analyzed." (Being and Time, 1927)

F. Most thoughts mimic the other five senses

Robert Andrew Wilson, Frank Keil:
12. "However, the central role of imagery in theories of mental activity was undermined when Kulpe, in 1904, pointed out that some thoughts are not accompanied by imagery..." (The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, 2001)

Temple Grandin (1947-now, professor):
13. "To understand animal thinking you've got to get away from a language. See my mind works like Google for images. You put in a key word; it brings up pictures. See language for me narrates the pictures in my mind." (NPR: A Conversation with Temple Grandin, 2006)

G. Reality is full of details

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677, philosopher):
14. "The more reality or being a thing has, the greater number of its attributes." (Ethics, 1677)

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768, novelist):
15. "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; and they are the life, the soul of reading; take them out of this book for instance, you might as well take the book along with them." (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen)

George Henry Lewes (1817-1878, literary critic):
16. "...it is in the selection of the characteristic details that the artistic power is manifested." (The Principles of Success in Literature, 1865)

H. Reality if full of potential concepts

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913, linguist):
17. "Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are not pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language." (Cours de Linguistique Generale, 1916)

Albert Einstein (1879-1955, physicist):
18. "By means of such concepts and mental relations between them, we are able to orient ourselves in the labyrinth of sense impressions." (Physics and Reality, 1936)

Peter Strawson (1919-2006, philosopher):
19. "Part of my aim is to exhibit some general and structural features of the conceptual scheme in terms of which we think about particular things." (Individuals, 1959)

I. The feeling of good is mysterious

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981, psychologist):
20. "Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation." (Goodreads.com)

G. E. Moore (1873-1958, philosopher):
21. "If I am asked, 'What is good?' my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked, 'How is that to be defined?' my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I have to say about it." (Principia Ethica, 1903)

Simone Weil (1909-1943, philosopher):
22. "There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world." (Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation, posthumous)

Top 12 questions in economics

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This post is a ranking of what I believe are the most important questions in economics. I define economics as the study of production, distributions and consumption of goods and services.

1. What goods and services should the government provide?
2. What economic activity should be regulated or illegal?
3. Does increased taxes on high-income earners hurt economic growth?
4. How can poor countries escape poverty?
5. How can rich countries increase growth?
6. Should poor individuals receive welfare?
7. Should governments in rich countries increase aid to poor countries?
8. Does increasing the minimum wage hurt economic growth?
9. Should the government subsidize innovative technologies?
10. Should the government guarantee a job to everyone?
11. Should the government increase spending during recessions?
12. Should the government increase the money supply during recessions?

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Collection of Alex Peek economics quotes: 2017-2018

This post is some of my quotes about economics from 2017 to 2018. There are 12 quotes listed below.

Econ Factbook

1. "Econfactbook.org is a economic data website that attempts to bring greater transparency to the world economy... The format of Econ Factbook is designed to eliminate excess statistics and only display the structure of an economy. By focusing on the structure, I believe it can help people better understand an economy." (Transparency and the world economy, 2018)

2. "I hope that someday every city and state in the world could have their own page using the same format. Currently economic data about localities is very difficult to find on the internet and I believe centralizing this data in a clear format would be useful." (Transparency and the world economy, 2018)

3. "The format of Econ Factbook is based on the circular flow of income model. The format has a section for each of the five main economic sectors: households, companies, government, banks and the central bank. Each section has a few statistics to illustrate the condition of that sector. In addition to these sections, the format has a section for employment, industries and international accounts." (Transparency and the world economy, 2018)

Current events and academic economics

4. "My undergraduate economics education has been very useful to me and I learned great information. I'm happy to have learned many demand and supply graphs along with other mathematical theories. But as a whole, analysis of current events was not the focus. In order to know what was going on in the real world, I had to read The Economist and other publications outside of class." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)

5. "That's not to say that academic economists completely ignore current events; there are some examples of great current event analysis in economic journals. But as a whole, I believe that current events is of secondary importance within academic economics." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)

6. "Before the financial crisis, there should have been academic economists devoted to analyzing exotic financial products in the actual financial system. These economists would have published papers maybe as early as 2005 to ring the alarm about the widespread fraud subprime mortgage securities. Although this type of work would have been useful, it was largely absent." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)

7. "I believe economists would benefit from reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis. The book explains how hedge fund manager Michael Burry was able to predict the subprime mortgage financial crisis long before anyone else. On the other hand, academic economists were largely blind to the impending crisis." (How to predict a financial crisis, 2017)

Economic statements

8. "I believe the goal of economics is to make accurate representations of economic phenomena. I regard this is the purpose of any branch of knowledge." (Evaluating economic statements, 2017)

9. "When I think about economics, I divide the discipline into five types of statements. Here are the five types: what economic policy should be, historical economic phenomena, current economic phenomena, future economic phenomena, general economic phenomena." (Five types of economic statements, 2018)

10. "Building a DSGE model is cool, but it's only a statement. I believe it's more important to find evidence that supports or disputes an economic statement in order to determine its accuracy." (Evaluating economic statements, 2017)

Confounding variables

11. "There are real mechanical relationships in the social realm that accurately fit mathematical equations. Although I think such relationships exist, I'm more inclined to believe that the vast majority of social reality does not operate mechanistically. There are too many confounding variables in the social realm that can't be inserted into a mathematical equation." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)

12. "Applying the scientific method (i.e. controlled experiments) to social reality is a difficult task. Quasi-experimental methods are worth developing, but we should always be wary about unseen confounding variables. Despite these difficulties, I believe that there are real economic relationships that can be discovered using econometrics." (Current events and academic economics, 2018)

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Collection of Alex Peek epistemology quotes: 2018

This post is some of my quotes about epistemology in 2018. There are 12 quotes below. An updated version of this post can be found at this link: Collection of quotes from Knowledge and Representation

Principles

1. "Principles constitute the outline of our knowledge. We can add to this list of principles and create dynamic systems. In this regard, principles help organize our thoughts into coherent structures." (What is a principle? 2018)

2. "I enjoy collecting quotes and organizing them into clear structures. To me, structured quotes are easier to understand than continuous prose." (Quotes and the organization of thoughts, 2018)

Reason

3. "I also believe many disagreements go unresolved because people are not clear about the evidence and reasons they are using. For example, someone might assume that a particular piece of evidence is so obvious that they don't even mention it in a debate. They assume that the person they're arguing with is also aware of this evidence. But in actuality, the other person doesn't know about this piece of evidence, thus resulting in a disconnect. For this reason, I believe its important to be explicit about all supporting reasons." (What is an argument? 2018)

4. "The first step is to figure out what exactly is being debated. This would be to determine a statement that one side believes is true while the other believes is false. Surprisingly, this can be difficult in some cases but its a necessary pre-requite." (What is bias? 2018)

5. "The second step is for each side to provide a list of concise reasons why they hold their belief. Each side should be limited to about 5 reasons. Each reason should be clearly stated and consist of no more than a few sentences. This enables the structure of the belief to become transparent." (What is bias? 2018)

6. "Instead of arguing against a morphing argument, we can hold each side still and dissect each belief. In this regard, we can discover that some reasons are false or have a weak connection to the proposition." (What is bias? 2018)

Language

7. "I believe that language is formed through establishment rather than usage. For example, imagine that we have a million different color shades and we want to give a word to each shade. In this situation, we could name every color a separate number. This process would establish many word-concept relationships. Although we wouldn't use every color shade, the meanings would still remain." (What is establishment? 2018)

8. "I believe that almost every word in the English language has multiple meanings. For example, the word 'argument' could mean a verbal disagreement between two people or it could mean a set of reasons to support a belief. Another example, the word 'time' could mean a specific occasion or it could mean the entire phenomena of past, present and future." (What is literal? 2018)

9. "Instead of trying to differentiate between objective and subjective propositions, I think of propositions existing along a continuum between objective and subjective. I believe there are too many unseen misinterpretation traps to safely conclude that a statement is 100% objective (except for mathematics and logic symbols). For this reason, I believe that the word 'objective' is subjective." (What is objective? 2018)

10. "These examples show that being perfectly literal is somewhat of an elusive task. For most words, it's not clear what the primary meaning is. In this regard, we can only subjectively choose what we believe is most literal meaning." (What is literal? 2018)

Cogito

11. "I exist. Consciousness exists. Experience exists. A sense exists. A perception exists. Reality exists. Time exists... I believe that these seven propositions are necessary for any hallucination to happen. In this regard, even the most elaborate hallucination could not negate any of these propositions." (What is a fact? 2018)

12. "If the self didn't exist, there would be nobody to view the hallucination. If consciousness didn't exist, the hallucination wouldn't have been seen. If experience didn't exist, the hallucination wouldn't have been endured. If a senses didn't exist, there would be no way to access data about the hallucination. If a perception didn't exist, the hallucination wouldn't have been perceived. If reality didn't exist, there would be nothing. If time didn't exist, there would be no seconds to experience the hallucination." (What is a fact? 2018)

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Top 8 questions in epistemology

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This post is a ranking of what I believe are the most important questions in epistemology. I define epistemology as the study of knowledge.

1. How do reasons support a belief?
2. What can we know with absolute certainty?
3. What are the limits of knowledge?
4. Does a priori knowledge exist?
5. Is all knowledge subjective to a degree?
6. Does all knowledge rely on intuition to a degree?
7. What is the scientific method?
8. Is science always true?

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Top 8 questions in the philosophy of language

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This post is a ranking of what I believe are the most important questions in philosophy of language. I define language as written or spoken symbols.

1. How does a word get its meaning?
2. How do words in a sentence combine together to create meaning?
3. Can language be absolutely true?
4. Do perfect definitions exist?
5. What words are absolutely objective?
6. What sentences are absolutely objective?
7. Do concepts exist in transcendental reality?
8. Do humans have pre-wired grammar?

License: CC BY-SA 4.0