by Judith Curry
I’ve been invited to write a paper on the topic of consensus in climate change.
The journal is a review journal, outside the field of climate science. I am not sure exactly what the commissioning editor had in mind, but I have put together a draft (appended below). I hope to submit the paper sometime next week.
I look forward to your constructive comments. I am especially hoping for suggestions for the last section “Ways forward.”
Tentative title: Climate Change: No Consensus on Consensus (note: No consensus on consensus was the title of one of my first posts at Climate Etc.)
Introduction
“Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually” – Abba Eban
With the objective of providing a robust scientific basis for climate policy, the United Nations initiated a scientific consensus building process under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). The concept of consensus regarding climate change was introduced in the context of the IPCC in this statement by John Houghton in the Foreword to the IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR): (REF)
“Although, as in any developing scientific topic, there is a minority of opinions which we have not been able to accommodate, the peer review has helped to ensure a high degree of consensus among authors and reviewers regarding the results presented. Thus the Assessment is an authoritative statement of the views of the international scientific community at this time….”
Subsequent to the FAR, consensus became codified in the IPCC’s procedures: “in taking decisions, drawing conclusions, and adopting reports, the IPCC Plenary and Working Groups shall use all best endeavours to reach consensus.” REF
The IPCC consensus findings have been echoed by many scientific organizations, including the following that explicitly use the word “consensus” in their statements:
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (2006)
- U.S. National Academies of Sciences (2008)
- Joint Science Academies statement (2005)
- American Meteorological Society (2003):
Wiengart (1999) states that the IPCC’s consensus approach has been largely driven by the desire to communicate climate science coherently to a wide spectrum of policy users. In this context, Goodwin (2011) argues that the IPCC consensus has been used as an appeal to authority in the representation of scientific results as the basis for urgent policy making.
The idea of a scientific consensus surrounding climate change has been rejected by a number of people, including both scientists and politicians. Notably, the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has written a report entitled Climate Change Reconsidered (Idso and Singer, 2009, 2011), that relatives or contradicts the main conclusions of the IPCC; Van der Sluijs (2012) argues that this report should be understood as a form of counter-expertise. The NIPCC report Appendix contains a list of over 30,000 scientists that do not support the IPCC consensus. While the NIPCC is nowhere near as well known as the IPCC, much effort has been undertaken by those that support the IPCC consensus to discredit skeptical voices including the NIPCC.
Apart from the issue of the relative merits of the IPCC versus the NIPCC reports, the mere existence the NIPCC report and the list of 30,000 scientists disputing the findings of the IPCC raises the issue of whether a scientific consensus on climate change makes sense, given the disagreement, uncertainties and areas of ignorance. As students of science, we are taught to reject ad populam or ‘bandwagon’ appeals; this sentiment is articulated by the motto of the UK Royal Society: ‘nullius in verba’, which is roughly translated as ‘take nobody’s word for it’.
Amidst the increasingly intense public debate on the issue of climate change and the recent challenges to the credibility of the IPCC (e.g. Grundman 2012; Beck 2012), the topic of consensus itself has become a topic of debate, in context of the science as well as it role in policy making. This essay seeks to shed light on these issues by providing context from the philosophy of science, psychology of cognitive biases, and decision making. This essay argues that the claim of consensus is the ultimate source of controversy surrounding the IPCC, and that a scientific consensus on controversial and complex topic is not needed for policy makers to act on the issue.
Consensus and the philosophy of science
“The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.” – Rem Koolhaas
The debate surrounding the consensus on climate change is complicated by the complexity of both the scientific and the associated sociopolitical issues. Underlying this debate is a fundamental tension between two competing conceptions of scientific inquiry: the consensual view of science versus the dissension view (e.g. Laudan, 1984). Under the consensual approach, “the goal of science is a consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field” (Ziman, 1967). According to Ziman, scientific consensus consists of a general body of scientific knowledge comprised of facts and principles that are firmly established and accepted without serious doubt, by an overwhelming majority of competent, well-informed scientists. Based upon this view, science is strictly cumulative (Laudan, 1984).
The opposing view of science is that of dissension. According to Laudan (1984), there are four arguments that undermine the consensus perspective: scientific research is controversy-laden; incommensurability of theories; underdetermination of theories; and successful counternormal behavior. The importance of controversy is evident in Kuhn’s (1977) arguments, whereby the emergence of new scientific ideas requires a process that permits rational men to disagree, with advocates of different paradigms often subscribing to different methodological standards and cognitive values. Underdetermination implies that inadequate data and understanding does not allow one theory to be selected unambiguously to the exclusion of all its competitors. Feyerabend (1978) has argued that there are many noteworthy instances of scientific progress whereby scientists have apparently violated the norms or canons usually called scientific.
Lehrer (1975) raises the following question: When is it reasonable for a person to conform to a consensus and when is it reasonable to dissent? His response:
“We shall answer the question in terms of an intellectual concern of science and rational inquiry. Succintly stated, the concern is to obtain truth and avoid error. We shall argue that consensus among a reference group of experts thus concerned is relevant only if agreement is not sought. If a consensus arises unsought in the search for truth and the avoidance of error, such consensus provides grounds which, though they may be overridden, suffice for concluding that conformity is reasonable and dissent is not. If, however, consensus is aimed at by the members of the reference group and arrived at by intent, it becomes conspiratorial and irrelevant to our intellectual concern.”
With genuinely well-established scientific theories, ‘consensus’ is not discussed and the concept of consensus is arguably irrelevant. For example, there is no point to discussing a consensus that the Earth orbits the sun, or that the helium molecule is lighter than the nitrogen molecule. While a consensus may arise surrounding a specific scientific hypothesis or theory, the existence of a consensus is not itself the evidence.
Yearly (2009) characterizes the IPCC consensus building process as “an exercise in collective judgment about subjective Bayesian likelihoods in areas of uncertain knowledge.” Goodwin (2011) argues that the IPCC consensus is a manufactured consensus, resulting from an intentional consensus building process. Judging the manufactured consensus of the IPCC by Lehrer’s standards implies that the IPCC consensus is not intellectually meaningful. This argument does not imply that the IPCC’s conclusions are necessarily incorrect, but leads to the conclusion that the consensus building process employed by the IPCC does not lend intellectual substance to their arguments.
Consensus and bias
“A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what’s real and what’s not and most of us have been going along with it ever since.” – Charles de Lint
If the objective of scientific research is to obtain truth and avoid error, how might a consensus seeking process introduce bias into the science and increase the chances for error? Confirmation bias is a well-known psychological principle (e.g. Nickerson 1998) that “connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand.” Confirmation bias usually refers to unwitting selectivity in the acquisition and interpretation of evidence.
Kelly (2008) provides some insight into confirmation bias, arguing that “a belief held at earlier times can skew the total evidence that is available at later times, via characteristic biasing mechanisms, in a direction that is favorable to itself.” Kelly (2008) also finds that “All else being equal, individuals tend to be significantly better at detecting fallacies when the fallacy occurs in an argument for a conclusion which they disbelieve, than when the same fallacy occurs in an argument for a conclusion which they believe.”
An individual’s assessment of a scientific issue and the associated levels of uncertainty can be influenced by the group dynamic in a consensus building process. In its recent review of the IPCC, the InterAcademy Committee (IAC) REF states that “Studies suggest that informal elicitation measures, especially those designed to reach consensus, lead to different assessments of probabilities than formal measures. Informal procedures often result in probability distributions that place less weight in the tails of the distribution than formal elicitation methods, possibly understating the uncertainty associated with a given outcome.” An example is provided by Morgan et al. (2006), who elicited subjective probability distributions from 24 leading atmospheric scientists that reflect their individual judgments about radiative forcing from anthropogenic aerosols. Consensus was strongest in their assessments of the direct aerosol effect. However, the range of uncertainty that a number of experts associated with their estimates for indirect aerosol forcing was substantially larger than that suggested by either the IPCC 3rd or 4th Assessment Reports.
Recent research by Koriat (2012) provides insight into the group dynamics of consensual judgments by examining how well a confidence-based strategy works in groups. When most people did not know the correct answers, confidence-based group decisions were worse than those of even the worst-performing individual, because group decisions are dominated by the more confident member. An implication of Koriat’s research is that in uncertain environments, groups might make better decisions by relying on the guidance of those who express the most doubt.
Kelly (2005) describes an additional source of confirmation bias in the consensus building process: “As more and more peers weigh in on a given issue, the proportion of the total evidence which consists of higher order psychological evidence [of what other people believe] increases, and the proportion of the total evidence which consists of first order evidence decreases . . . At some point, when the number of peers grows large enough, the higher order psychological evidence will swamp the first order evidence into virtual insignificance.” Kelly (2005) concludes: “Over time, this invisible hand process tends to bestow a certain competitive advantage to our prior beliefs with respect to confirmation and disconfirmation.”
With regards to the IPCC, cognitive biases in the context of an institutionalized consensus building process have arguably resulted in the consensus becoming increasingly confirmed in a self-reinforcing way. This ‘invisible hand’ that marginalizes skeptics is operating to the substantial detriment of climate science, as well as biasing policies that are informed by climate science.
Role of consensus in decision making
“To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.” – Margaret Thatcher
The mandate of the IPCC is to provide policy‐relevant information to policy makers involved in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Based upon the precautionary principle, the UNFCCC established a qualitative climate goal for the long term: avoiding dangerous climate change by stabilization of the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases. The IPCC’s scientific assessments play a primary role in the legitimation of national and international policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The main practical objective of the IPCC has been to assess whether there is sufficient certainty in the science so as to trigger political action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This objective has led to IPCC assessments being framed around identifying anthropogenic influences on climate, environmental and socio-economic impacts of climate change, and stabilization of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
The role of consensus in this decision making is described by Oreskes (2004): “If we feel that a policy question deserves to be informed by scientific knowledge, then we have no choice but to ask, what is the consensus of experts on this matter? If there is no consensus of experts—as was the case among earth scientists about moving continents before the late 1960s—then we have a case for more research. If there is a consensus of experts—as there is today over the reality of anthropogenic climate change —then we have a case for moving forward with relevant action.”
Oreskes’ statement is based on the linear model of expertise (e.g. Beck 2011), or ‘speaking truth to power’, whereby first science has to ‘get it right’ and then policy comes into play. The influence of science on policy is assumed to be deterministic: if the scientific facts are ‘sound,’ or then they have a direct impact on policy. In the linear model, the key question is whether existing scientific knowledge is certain enough to compel action; Oreskes (2004) argues that we should not expect logically indisputable proof, but rather a robust consensus of experts. The linear model of expertise continues to dominate perceptions among climate scientists and policy makers to some extent (Beck 2011; Pielke 2007; Sarewitz 2010).
Van der Sluijs (2012) argues that the IPCC has adopted a ‘speaking consensus to power’ approach that sees uncertainty and dissent as problematic, and attempts to mediate these into a consensus. The ‘speaking consensus to power’ strategy acknowledges that available knowledge is inconclusive, and uses consensus as a proxy for truth through a negotiated interpretation of the inconclusive body of scientific evidence. The ‘consensus to power’ strategy reflects a specific vision of how politics deals with scientific uncertainties (Van der Sluijs, 2012) and creates a clear knowledge base for decision making following the linear model of expertise.
Van der Sluijs et al. (2005, 2008) characterizes scientific assessments of climate change as based on a mixture of knowledge, assumptions, models, scenarios, extrapolations, and known and unknown unknowns. Because of the limited knowledge base, climate change assessments unavoidably use expert judgments and subjective probability judgments based upon information ranging from well-established knowledge to judgments, educated guesses, tentative assumptions, and even crude speculation.
Classical decision making under the linear model involves reducing the uncertainties before acting. In the face of irreducible uncertainties and substantial ignorance, reducing the uncertainty is not viable, but not acting could be associated with catastrophic impacts. Under conditions of deep uncertainty or ignorance, optimal decisions based upon a scientific consensus can carry a considerable risk. Weitzmann (2009) characterizes the decision making environment surrounding climate change in the follow way: “Much more unsettling for an application of expected utility analysis is deep structural uncertainty in the science of global warming coupled with an economic inability to place a meaningful upper bound on catastrophic losses from disastrous temperature changes. The climate science seems to be saying that the probability of a system-wide disastrous collapse is non-negligible even while this tiny probability is not known precisely and necessarily involves subjective judgments.”
Obersteiner et al. (2001) describe the uncertainty surrounding the climate change science is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways: what is considered to be a serious problem could turn out to be less of a threat, whereas unanticipated and unforeseen surprises could be catastrophic. Obersteiner et al. argue that the strategy of assuming that climate models can predict the future of climate change accurately enough to choose a clear strategic direction might be at best marginally helpful and at worst downright dangerous: underestimating uncertainty can lead to strategies that do not defend the world against unexpected and sometimes even catastrophic threats. Obersteiner et al. note that another danger lies on the other side of the sword if uncertainties are too large and analytic planning processes are abandoned. While a higher level of confidence and a consensus can make decision makers more willing to act, overestimating the confidence can result in discounting the value of information in the decision making process if the confidence later proves to be unwarranted.
The linear model of expertise works well for ‘tame’ problems (e.g. Holt, 2004), where everybody pretty much agrees on both the problem and the solution. Successes in managing tame problems are evident in the domains of engineering and regulatory science. Beck (2012) argues that climate change has been framed as a relatively ‘tame’ problem that requires a straightforward solution, namely the top-down creation of a global carbon market. However, climate change is better characterized as wicked problem or a mess (e.g. Horn and Weber, 2007; Lazarus 2009). Holt (2004) argues that the general difficulty for consensus-building arises when problems which initially appear tame become ‘messes’, ‘wicked problems’ or even ‘wicked messes’ – where there are multiple problem definitions, the methods are open to contention and the solutions are variable and disputed, and ‘unknown unknowns’ suggest chronic conditions of ignorance and lack of capacity to imagine future eventualities of both the problem and the proposed solutions.
Consensus can play a constructive role in legitimizing policy based upon scientific research. The problems with a ‘speaking consensus to power’ approach are described by van der Sluijs (2012): it underexposes scientific uncertainties and dissent, making the chosen policy vulnerable to scientific errors; and it limits the political playing field in which players can present different policy perspectives.
Unintended consequences of the IPCC consensus
“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.” – Michael Crichton
The consensus approach used by the IPCC has received a number of criticisms. Oppenheimer et al. (2007) warn of the need to guard against overconfidence and argue that the IPCC consensus emphasizes expected outcomes, whereas it is equally important that policy makers understand the more extreme possibilities that consensus may exclude or downplay. Gruebler and Nakicenovic (2001) opine that “there is a danger that the IPCC consensus position might lead to a dismissal of uncertainty in favor of spuriously constructed expert opinion.” Curry (2011) finds that the consensus approach being used by the IPCC has failed to produce a thorough portrayal of the complexities of the problem and the associated uncertainties in our understanding.
Goodwin (2011) argues the consensus claim created opportunities to claim that the IPCC’s emphasis on consensus was distorting the science itself. “Once the consensus claim was made, scientists involved in the ongoing IPCC process had reasons not just to consider the scientific evidence, but to consider the possible effect of their statements on their ability to defend the consensus claim.” (Goodwin, 2011) We have personally encountered this effect numerous times in our interaction with colleagues that support the IPCC consensus.
While the IPCC’s consensus approach acknowledges uncertainties, defenders of the IPCC consensus have expended considerable efforts in the “boundary work” of distinguishing those qualified to contribute to the climate change consensus from those who are not (Goodwin, 2011). These efforts have characterized skeptics as quantitatively small (e.g. Oreskes), extreme (Hassleman), and scientifically suspect (e.g Anderegg et al.) These efforts create temptations to make illegitimate attacks on scientists whose views do not align with the consensus, and to dismiss any disagreement as politically motivated ‘denialism.’ ( e.g. Trenberth, other REFS). Goodwin (2011) argues that this boundary drawing produces the strong appearance that the boundary between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ is based on political views.
There are broad consequences to this boundary work. McKitrick (20xx) argues that consensus statements by scientific organizations put words in peoples’ mouths, imposing groupthink and conformity. Consensus statements silence and marginalize members who disagree with some or all of the statement, “demoting them to second-class citizens in their own profession, regardless of their numbers or credibility as scientists.” This marginalization acts to degrade the intellectual climate in the field, and the declaration of consensus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The scientists who disagree with some or all aspects of the IPCC consensus include not only scientists from within the field of climate science (however that might be defined), but an increasingly broad community of technical educated people from a range of science and engineering disciplines that have educated themselves on climate science. Some of these individuals are quite vocal and are frequently quoted by the mainstream media. This has led to increasingly vociferous attacks on these dissenting scientists by supporters of the IPCC consensus, and to the labeling of anyone who disagrees with any aspect of the consensus as a ‘denier.’ (e.g Hasselman, etc.) The use of ‘denier’ to label anyone who disagrees with the IPCC consensus leads to concerns about the IPCC being enforced as dogma, which is tied to how dissent is dealt with.
The linear model of expertise places science at the center of political debate. Scientific controversies surrounding evidence of climate change have thus become a proxy for political battles over whether and how to react to climate change (Pielke 2007). Therefore, winning a scientific debate means attaining a privileged position in political battle, hence providing motivation for defending the consensus. As a result, it has become difficult to disentangle political arguments about climate policies from scientific arguments about the evidence for human-induced climate change. The quality of both political debate and scientific practice suffers as a consequence (Hulme 2009c).
The linear model of expertise ‘speaking consensus to power’ tends to stifle discussion of alternative policy approaches. The IPCC has framed its assessment around the UNFCCC policy of stabilizing greenhouse emissions, focusing its assessment on the attribution of climate change and the sensitivity of climate change to greenhouse gases. Demeritt (2001) argues that the narrow focus on issues of attribution masks major political implications, marginalizes issues around adaptation and development, and fails to engage with alternative approaches and to generate ideas to inform its ‘solutions.’ Pielke (2012) argues that this narrow focus and ignoring our ignorance diverts attention away from options that do not depend on scientific certainties about climate change, such as accelerating decarbonization through expanding energy access, improving security, and improving resilience to extreme weather events.
While the public may not understand the complexity of the science or be culturally predisposed to accept the consensus, they can certainly understand the vociferous arguments over the science portrayed by the media. Further, they can judge the social facts surrounding the consensus building process, including those revealed by the so-called “Climategate” episode (e.g. Grundman 2012, Maibach et al. 2012; Beck 2012), and decide whether to trust the experts whose opinion comprises the consensus. Beck (2012) argues that “in a public debate, the social practices of knowledge-making matter as much as the substance of the knowledge itself.”
In summary, the manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public’s trust in the IPCC and the consensus building process.
Ways forward
“Science is belief in the ignorance of experts” – Richard Feynman
Problems with a consensus seeking approach for the climate change problem have been described in the previous sections. In particular, the linear model of expertise is a significantly flawed approach for the climate change problem. Uncertainties, ambiguities, dissent and ignorance should not be concealed behind a scientific consensus. At the same time, these uncertainties should not be regarded as a restriction on decision making. The challenge is to open up the decision making processes in a way that renders their primary nature more honestly political and economic, while giving proper weight to scientific reason and evidence (Wynne 2010). Science should be a tool for policy action rather than a tool for political advocacy (Dessai et al. 2009).
The single most important thing that is needed with regards to the science – particularly in context of the IPCC assessment reports – is explicit reflection on uncertainties, ambiguities and areas of ignorance (both known and unknown unknowns) and more openness for dissent in the IPCC processes (e.g. Curry and Webster 2011; Curry 2011). Greater openness about scientific uncertainties and ignorance, and more transparency about dissent and disagreement, would provide policymakers with a more complete picture of climate science and its limitations. With regards to dissent, Van der Sluijs (2012) argues that it is important not to reject diverging opinions but to actually pay specific attention to them. Climate skeptics and other scientists who think differently than the mainstream (both that the problem is less severe and more severe) on certain points can fulfill a counter-expertise function in the debate about climate change. Solow (2011) argues that the IPCC must help the policymaker understand the current incompleteness of earth systems science and the full range of possible outcomes, with disagreements among experts revealed.
Along these lines, some specific recommendations for the IPCC have been made. Oppenheimer et al. (2007) state: “Increased transparency, including a thorough narrative report on the range of views expressed by panel members, emphasizing areas of disagreement that arose during the assessment, would provide a more robust evaluation of risk.” Van der Sluijs (2012) suggest including a dissent chapter in the synthesis report of the IPCC, which contains a sketch of minority scientific views and points of ongoing scientific dispute. Solow (2011) recommends that the IPCC provide a perspective of earth systems science as an evolving human enterprise, explaining how recent research has altered perspectives. In the context of iterative risk management, policy makers need insight into the rate of learning, as well as what is known and unknown. Curry (2011) argues for a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify better ways of framing the climate change problem, explore and characterize uncertainty, reason about uncertainty in the context of evidence-based logical hierarchies, and eliminate bias from the consensus building process itself.
Moving forward requires a reassessment of the ‘consensus to power’ approach for the science-policy interface that has evolved in the context of the IPCC and UNFCCC. Given the discomfort associated with scientific uncertainty and ignorance in the linear model of expertise, Solow (2011) makes the point that “It will take courage to disclose lack of consensus.” He further states that coexistence of contending views (‘low agreement’) is normal in science, not a cause for embarrassment, and users of the IPCC reports need this information. Pielke (2012) cites an example of decision making described by Gross (2010): “The limited knowledge and predictive capacities of science were not seen to be signs of poor science. Instead, the actors agreed on what was not known and took it into account for future planning.” Pielke argues that awareness of ignorance actually opens up possibilities for political compromise and policies that proceed incrementally based on the feedback of practical experience: agreement on facts as a prerequisite to action is not necessary, so long there is an agreement to learn based on experience.
Holt (2004) argues that messes and wicked problems require organizations to abandon the desire to design a solitary strategy determined from within a specific ‘culture’. Holt views risk management for messes and wicked problems as the resolution between alternative solutions and the dissolution of confusions, more so than the pursuit of optimal solutions.
There are frameworks for decision making under deep uncertainty and ignorance that accept uncertainty and dissent as key elements of the decision making process (e.g. Lempert 2002; Smithson 2008; Van der Sluijs 2012). Rather than choosing an optimal policy based on a scientific consensus, decision makers can design robust and flexible policy strategies that account for uncertainty, ignorance and dissent. Robust strategies formally consider uncertainty, whereby decision makers seek to reduce the range of possible scenarios over which the strategy performs poorly. Flexible strategies are adaptive, and can be quickly adjusted to advancing scientific insights. These approaches have a drawback (e.g. van der Sluijs 2012): an overexposure of dissent and uncertainty, which in practice may undermine the basis for political policymaking. For these strategies to work, politicians need to take political responsibility and not hide endlessly behind scientific uncertainties. When working with policy makers and communicators, it is important that scientists not to fall into the trap of acceding to inappropriate demands for certainty from decision makers.
The perspective of Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) on post normal science – characterized by conflicting values and deep uncertainties – is useful in moving forward on wicked problems and messes. When the stakes are high and uncertainties are large, Funtowicz and Ravetz point out that there is a public demand to participate and assess quality, which they refer to as the extended peer community. The extended peer community consists not only of those with traditional institutional accreditation that are creating the technical work, but also those with much broader expertise that are capable of doing quality assessment and control on that work. New information technology and the open knowledge movement is facilitating the rapid diffusion of information and sharing of expertise, giving hitherto unrealized power to the peer communities. This newfound power has challenged the politics of expertise, and the “radical implications of the blogosphere” (Ravetz 2011) are just beginning to be understood. Arguing from consensus to enforce their conclusions doesn’t work with the extended peer community; what is needed is serious attempts to engage the extended peer community with the modes of expert reasoning used to reach those conclusions (Beck 2012).
• [Political failure of international negotiations on climate treaties, which relied on consensus to power strategy (need refs)] INCOMPLETE
•[Rise of the bottom-up approaches e.g. adaptive governance, which requires a different interface between climate science and policy (regional, uncertainties, no regrets policies, learn as you go; no consensus needed (need refs)] INCOMPLETE
The climate community has worked for more than 20 years to establish a consensus. The IPCC consensus building process arguably played a useful role in the early synthesis of the scientific knowledge and in building political will to act. The impact of the IPCC consensus probably peaked in 2006-2007, at the time of publication of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Since then, the implications of the messy wickedness of the climate change problem have become increasingly apparent. Courtesy of the CRU emails, we have a better understanding of the sausage making that went into creating the IPCC consensus (e.g Ryghaug and Skjolsvold 2010). Manufacturing a consensus in the context of the IPCC has acted to hyper-politicize the scientific and policy debate, to the detriment of both. It is time to abandon the concept of consensus in favor of open debate of the arguments themselves and discussion of a broad range of policy options that include bottom up approaches to decreasing vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events and developing technologies to expand energy access.
References (incomplete)
Gross, Matthias. 2010. Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society and Ecological Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Laudan, L. (1984): Science and Values. Berkeley CA University of California press.
Ziman, J (1967); Public Knowledge, Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press.
Feyerabend, P. (1978) Against Method. London, UK Verso
Oreskes, Naomi. “Science and Public Policy: What’s Proof Got to Do with It?” Environmental Science & Policy 7 (2004): 369-83.
Nickerson RS 1998: confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Rev. Gen. Psych., 2, 175-220.
Esser, J.K., 1998: Alive and well after 25 years: A review of groupthink research. Org. Behav. And Human Dec. Proc., 73, 116-141.
Weingart,P. (1999) Scientific expertise and political accountability. Paradoxes of science in politics Science & Public Policy 26(3), 151-161
Yearley,S. (2009) Sociology and climate change after Kyoto: what roles for social science in understanding climate change? Current Sociology 57(3), 389-405
Horst,M. and Irwin,A. (2010) Nations at ease with radical knowledge: on consensus, consensusing and false consensusness Social Studies of Science 40(1), 105-126
Oreskes, Naomi. “Science and Public Policy: What’s Proof Got to Do with It?” Environmental Science & Policy 7 (2004): 369-83.
Holt, Robin (2004) ‘Risk Management: the Talking Cure’, Organization 11(2): 251-70.
Grundman, R. 2012 : The legacy of climategate: revitalizing or undermining climate science and policy? WIREs Clim Change doe: 10.1002/wcc.166
Maibach E, A. Leiserowitz, S. Cobb, M. Shank, K.M. Cobb 2012: The legacy of climategate: revitalizing or undermining climate science and policy? WIREs Clim Change doe: 10.1002/wcc.168
Robert E. Horn & Robert P. Weber, New Tools for Resolving Wicked Problems: Mess Mapping and Resolution Mapping Processes 3 (MacroVU(r), Inc. & Strategy Kinetics LLC, 2007), available at http://www.strategykinetics.com//New_Tools_For_Resolving_ Wicked_Problems.pdf.
Lazarus, R.J. 2009: Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future. Cornell Law Review, 94, 1153.
Demeritt, D. (2001), ‘The construction of global warming and the politics of science’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91 (2), 307-337
Oreskes, Naomi. 2004. “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” Science 306 (5702): 1686–1686.
Pielke Jr, R. (2007) The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 188pp. Washington, D.C., 244 pp.
Obersteiner, M., C. Azar, S. Kossmeier, R. Mechler, K. Mollersten, S. Nilsson, P. Read, Y. Yamagata, J. Yan (2001) Managing Climate Risk. IR-01-051, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 23 pp. http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/IR-01-051.pdf
Oppenheimer, M., B.C. O’Neill, M. Webster, and S. Agrawala (2007), The Limits of Consensus, Science, 317, 1505-1506.
Lempert, R J (2002), “A New Decision Sciences for Complex Systems”, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 99, 7309-7313.
Gruebler, A and N. Nakicenovic (2001) Identifying dangers in an uncertain climate: We need to research all the potential outcomes, not try to guess which is likeliest to occur. Nature, 412, 15
Funtowicz, S.O. and J. R. Ravetz (1993) Science for the post-normal age. Futures, 25, 739-755.
Weitzman, M.L., 2009: On modeling and interpreting the economics of catastrophic climate change. Rev. Econ. Stat., 91, 1-19.
Bammer G and M. Smithson: 2008, Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Earthscan Publications Ltd, 400 pp.
Hasselman, K. 2010: The climate change game. Nature Geoscience 3, 511-512.
Kelly, T.: 2005, ‘The epistemic significance of disagreement.’ In J. Hawthorne (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives vol 19: Epistemology, 179-209.
Kelly, T.: 2008, ‘Disagreement, dogmatism and belief polarization’, J. Philosophy, CV, 611-633.
Oppenheimer, M., B.C. O’Neill, M. Webster, and S. Agrawala: 2007: ‘The Limits of Consensus’, Science, 317, 1505-1506.
Van der Sluijs, J.P., Craye, M., Funtowicz, S., Kloprogge, P., Ravetz, J., Risbey, J.: 2005, ‘Combining quantitative and qualitative measures of uncertainty in model-based environmental assessment: the NUSAP system’, Risk Analysis, 25, 481–492.
Van der Sluijs, J.P., R. van Est, M. Riphagen: 2010a, Room for climate debate: Perspectives on the interaction between climate politics, science and the media. Rathenau Instituut-Technology Assessment, The Hague. 96 pp http://www.rathenau.nl/uploads/tx_tferathenau/Room_for_climate_debate.pdf
van der Sluijs, J.P., R. van Est, M. Riphagen: 2010b, ‘Beyond consensus: reflections from a democratic perspective on the interaction between climate politics and science’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2 (5-6) 409–415
Ryghaug, M and TM Skjosvold, 2010: The global warming of climate science: Climategate and the construction of facts.International Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 24, issue 3, 2010, p. 287-307.
——–
Moderation note: this is a technical thread, and comments will be moderated for relevance.
The climate community has worked for more than 20 years to establish a consensus.
Good job too?
The UN’s effort “to build a scientific consensus“ reflects a basic misunderstanding of science.
Scientific consensus happens naturally when divergent opinions coalesce because lingering questions and doubts have been resolved. Consensus is an act of free will. Scientific consensus cannot be coerced from outside.
The UN’s efforts “to build a scientific consensus“ were thus doomed from the start.
However, it is not surprising that world leaders and the UN still have the illusion they can build a scientific consensus !
Climategate emails and documents that surfaced in 2009 revealed sixty-four years (2009 – 1945 = 64 yrs) of united efforts by this group “to build a scientific consensus“ to hide “the fountain of energy” that can be released from the cores of heavy atoms, stars, galaxies and perhaps some planets.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-555
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
The carrot and the stick for building consensus, postmodern science:
a.) Carrot: Grant funds, awards, tenure, fame, fortune
b.) Stick: Anonymous reviews of proposals and papers
See: J. Marvin Herndon, “Corruption of science in America,” The Dot Connector Magazine 2, 25-32 (2011) http://nuclearplanet.com/corruption.pdf
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/ and http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about
In fact, Tom, the UN worked out of sight for more than 64 years “to build a scientific consensus“ before their game plan was exposed in 2009 by Climategate emails and documents.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
To hide reality, government scientists suddenly proclaim: “WE FOUND IT, maybe” – like the 4th of July discovery of the “God Particle!”
Another classic example from 2001:
1. The solution to the Solar Neutrino Puzzle was reported in March
_ . http://www.omatumr.com/lpsc.prn.pdf
2. “WE FOUND SOLAR NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS maybe” in June
_ . http://arxiv.org/pdf/nucl-ex/0106015v2.pdf
_ . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino_problem
Only four (4) authors reported #1; One hundred and seventy-eight (178) authors reported #2. Hence, scientific consensus purchased with public funds to promote misinformation.
What a sad, sad state of affairs for today’s broken and fearful world.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
“The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”
“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus: Period. – Dr. Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin Lecture (17 Jan 2003)
http://www.tsaugust.org/images/Lecture_by_Crichton_at_Caltech.pdf
omanuel | July 18, 2012 at 3:33 pm said “There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus”
OManuel, I’m officially asking you: for copyright permission, to use that sentence of yours, in my book. Stefan
The quote came directly from top portion of page 5, right column of the lecture by the late Dr. Michael Crichton at Caltech on 17 Jan 2003:
http://www.tsaugust.org/images/Lecture_by_Crichton_at_Caltech.pdf
So far as I know there is no law against quoting copyrighted material if the source is cited.
Or you can quote me here, quoting Dr. Crichton. The sentence is concise and forceful; I do not want to take credit for his talents.
Oliver K. Manuel
Two clowns log-rolling, how fitting.
omanuel | July 20, 2012 at 1:01 am
thanks Oliver, I’ll state yours and Dr. Creighton’s names, next to that sentence. Because extremist as the ” camarad Telescope” would like to point out something wrong; thanks again!!!
WebHubTelescope | July 20, 2012 at 5:28 am reply:
Telescope, my Camarad, some day, you should explain to us; how did you developed fear from the truth (truth-phobia) did you had unhappy childhood? is it your genetically inherited disease? Did your parents enjoyed telling wooffy crap? … There is medicine for every sickness – maybe we can help.
You don’t need to leave in fear / shivering from fear; when all the truth will be exposed… until then, happy insomnia. Important is for you, to understand: we are messengers, with the truth; we don’t create the truth / truth has being created; by whoever created the laws of physics. Don’t hate the honest people, for bringing the truth
In 8-9 months me commenting on this website, not you, Mosher, JimD; or any of the con-artist pointed anything that I’m wrong. That’s a white flag!
To be sincere: I was expecting; some of you swindlers to ”correct” any already ”correct” comment – by presenting in in your Cult’s wrong version – I need it, please correct me; on what you think that I’m wrong; I’ll make a copy of it; so that people on the street can compare, for themselves
In IPCC Admits Its Past Reports Were Junk Joe Bast (NIPCC/Heartland) reviews the implications of the IPCC accepting the IAC’s review, stating that it had
He notes:
Also posted at WUWT
Does the IPCC’s current “consensus” (aka press release) acknowledge that the previous “consensus” was not a scientific “consensus”?
Surely if the claim of consensus is controversial that is sufficient to make it false. Unless the claim is restricted to just those who agree, in which case it is spurious.
David Wojick | July 13, 2012 at 9:51 pm |
Assumes ‘controversial’, which is simply not in evidence in any great amount compared to the overall state of the body of knowledge.
A bit like claiming a splinter in one’s little finger is a medical emergency.. oh, wait, we’ve overdone medical analogies. A bit like claiming a flat tire.. no, we’ve done cars too. A bit like lying through one’s teeth to get one’s way! There, a new metaphor we haven’t heard lately, but one that perfectly fits.
Unless every contrarian is granted the power to overthrow all things, this stance of Dr. Wojick’s is dangerously irrational. A single dissenter could on such terms force schools to teach the “other side” to the US Constitution, to child abuse, to tortur.. Oh, wait, bad example that one.
Still, it’s a slippery slope we don’t want to race down goaded by the patent ulterior motives leading Dr. Wojick to attempt to subvert the education system and the children of America by deception and manipulation.
Utterly illogical. The presence or absence of controversy has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the claim that there is or is not a consensus.
That’s subjectivist hogwash. Using your logic “There is controversy over the claim that controversy implies anything. hence the claim that controversy implies something is false.” In short, your position is self defeating when applied to itself.
There is a consensus, a general agreement, amongst climate scientists who practice and publish climate science, that the world is warming, that GHGs cause warming, and that a substantial portion of the increase in warming is due to man. That consensus has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth or falsity of what is believed. However, rational creatures can and do rely on the beliefs of others in order to make decisions. Other rational creatures need not rely on the opinions of others, but there refusal to do so, says nothing about the truth of what is being discussed nor the rationality of parties who do rely on the opinions of others.
Your point is very good, as far as it goes.
The problem is that the consensus you describe is AGW, but the consensus that’s being discussed here is CAGW (*Catastrophic* AGW). It’s one thing to believe that CO2 can contribute to a moderate global warming, and quite another to believe that various feedbacks will triple the warming, triggering a chain reaction that will ultimately be catastrophic for mankind.
The Consensus being described here shows it’s falsehood by calling anyone who does not believe in CAGW a (neo-Holocaust) Denier. It doesn’t differentiate between skeptics of: 1) Climate Change, 2) Global Warming, 3) Anthropological Global Warming, and 4) Catastrophic AGW. That’s something entirely different.
Wayne2 | July 16, 2012 at 10:58 am |
Can we get off the CAGW straw man?
Replace *Catastrophic* with *COSTLY* and you have a better representation of the issue; better still would be *COSTLY, RISKY* (CRAGW).
CRAGW indicates that there is AGW (undisputed except by people who cannot be described otherwise than as in denial of factual observation and pure logic) and that it has associated with it Risk and Cost.
See, you don’t need *CaTaStRoPhY* craziness to understand CRAGW to be a violation of the property and safety rights of most by the lucrative adventurism of a few free riders who have never obtained consent for their trespass nor made compensation.
The Consensus is that the fact of AGW (notwithstanding those who deny this is accurate or very nearly true — see Newton’s 4th Principle) leads inevitably to CRAGW. There’s plenty of evidence of present costs and significant risks already, too, regardless of the efforts of many who are making unearned rents from their free riding carbon emitting, land use changing ways.
You don’t need a death spiral CAGW for CRAGW to be an unprincipled, dishonest, crooked, immoral practice of the fossil industry backed by unethical, corrupt, duty-shirking politicians. All it takes is the fact (or even probability) of AGW and associated costs and risks without compensation or consent.
Juvenile Scaremongering, by any other contorted Elaine-dance, is stil…
…wait for it…
Andrew
Contrary to your sophomoric rant, CAGW is not a strawman. Gore, Mann, and others have claimed that we must act or risk passing tipping points that will endanger future generations. We’re talking apocryphal stuff like a city-wrecking sea-level rise, severe droughts, severe storms, the spread of tropical diseases to formerly-temperate areas, etc.
These are catastrophes, literally. Or do you think intense hurricanes, widespread starvation, large numbers of heat-caused deaths, entire costal cities rendered uninhabitable, etc, are not “catastrophes”?
There are some AGW believers who even think that a little more heat is good for the planet as a whole. (And projected CO2 growth alone is around a 1-degree global temperature increase over a century. It’s only feedbacks that are not clearly understood that amplify this to significantly larger increases, you know.)
You’re also throwing around fancy words like “cost” and “risk”, without regard that: a) it’s cost/risk/benefit anlysis, and b) there are costs/risks/benefits to taking the actions you espouse as well as not taking the acts you espouse: it’s not all one-sided if you’re actually doing an analysis. Unless, of course, you believe that it is Catastrophic to not act, in which case let’s throw out the rest of the analysis because a catastrophe must be dealt with at all costs.
Bart R,
No. Definitely not. Because that is what the argument is about. That is the argument the Alarmists use to justify mitigation and carbon pricing. that is their entire argument.
You just need to listen to the video that Tempterrain posted on this thread, then spent numerous posts defending, to understand how the whole argument is about catastrophic consequences of AGW.
Look at the scaremongering film that was shown at the opening of the Copenhagen Conference as a clear demonstration that the whole arguments is about catastrophic man-made climate change.
If the argument was not all about catastrophe then we could have a rational debate about costs and benefits. It would be rational, not emotional.
“The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”
“Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more.”
I believe “factories of death” and “destroy the planet we know” would qualify as “catastrophic”. And this is from a world-leading expert on the topic, Dr. James Hansen.
“CAGW”. ?? If you are going to use the term you need to define what it means> Does it mean the Venus effect? Does it mean this?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Long-Thaw-Changing-Essentials/dp/0691136548
CAGW is anything but a strawman. It is the center plank of the whole alarmist program to justify a hike in taxes and politics. No impendsing catastrophe, no case for acting on very uncertain evidence.
That is the sole reason a rabid statist in “minarchist” clothes like Bart would like it sidelined.
Gentlemen, if CAGW is all you’ll discuss, the only thing occupying your minds, the only issue for you, then I wish you and those who want to talk about nothing but CAGW well of that position.
Because the rest of the world, and I with it, have long since moved on, and are talking about other things, too; because CAGW is only the far end of a very, very large topic, and the vast majority of the topic doesn’t favor your views very much.. which you’d know if you could take your eyes off the death-train doomsaying stuff and pay attention to your wallets.
Yeah what is the matter with you guys ? Always discussing CAGW and climate on a climate blog…..really! Why don’t you join young Bart and the rest of the world’s progressives who have brushed all its problems under the carpet, and talk about something else so that the new taxation can proceed without hiccups ?
Wayne2 | July 17, 2012 at 2:58 pm |
To quote me: http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/18/climate-models-at-their-limit/#comment-220600
CAGW is the far wall of a dungeon strewn with hazards moral and projected, real and potential, and, yes, some imagined terrors and fictions too. We do not know its full dimensions and lack the means to plumb its actual horrors with precision and completeness.
It’s not the far wall we should find so repellent. It’s that we’re being dragged into that direction without our consent, against our will, over vociferous objection, and with no hope of compensation in proportion to the violations suffered.
Seriously, who raised you?
Most “climate scientists who practice and publish climate science” work and publish in a very narrow slice of climate science and are not qualified to determine whether the rather gigantic IPCC Report is accurate or not. The issue facing mankind is not whether GHG cause warming (they do), or how much of recent warming is due to GHG (we don’t know), but rather, how draconian must our reduction in GHG emissions to comply with alarmist predictions of disaster (in case they are right), and how can we provide the people of the world with energy while effecting such draconian reductions in GHG emissions?
Donald- Let’s go more basic.
What data should drive a reasonable person to the conclusion that a slightly warmer world is worse overall for humanity over the long term?
Now to make it a bit more practical and unfortunately more difficult- What data should drive the leaders of any particular nation to conclude that their nation will be worse off overall over the long term?
Yes it is warming, but we are unsure as to how much, and we don’t understand that it will necessarily not be better for us
Dear Rob:
I am not completely sure I understood your point. I will try to make my points clearer. A guy who played third base for the Detroit Tigers is not necessarily as qualified as Howard Cosell (“I never played the game”) was to announce, interview or analyze sports in general. Same for someone who made an instrument to measure solar irradiance – not necessarily being qualified to evaluate the findings of the IPCC. Therefore, a consensus of those who published narrowly in climatology does not constitute a group of people with synoptic broad understanding of the many intricate elements of climate.
Furthermore, in discussions of “consensus” it remains unclear exactly what was consensed. In simplistic terms, the consensus seems to be that further emissions of CO2 in the 21st century in a business as usual scenario is likely to lead to additional global warming producing very bad consequences. The question, too often ignored, is how draconian and rapid must the reduction in GHG be to avoid catastrophe within the consensus view, and how can the people of the world be supplied with sufficient energy within such reductions in emissions? I doubt there is any consensus on that question.
Rob Starkey | July 16, 2012 at 2:16 pm |
A faulty analysis comes out of the question is a slightly warmer world worse overall. The endpoint of the path isn’t the problem, it’s the path itself.
Yes, it’s warming. Yes, it’s caused in large part by human activity. Yes, it’s a faster warming than otherwise. Yes, faster change is more costly to adapt to than slower change. Yes, faster change is more risky than slower change. Yes, the sea level will rise and either wipe out or require dykes around significant coastal lands. Yes, watercourses will shift leaving some areas dry that otherwise would have water, and some areas under water that would otherwise be arable land too. Yes, habitats for animals will shift and have been measured to have shifted significantly and rapidly. Yes, mathematics shows that external forcings lead complex systems to shift to new levels and their attractors to change in what must be termed greater risk of extreme weather events and new weather regimes such as drought or flood or heatwave or deep cold or cyclone.
“A slightly warmer world” is not the topic at hand. Even if the net value to all is somehow greater “in the long run”, some will lose and none will have the option to consent or object or receive compensation from those Free Riders who are the cause of this harm.
Bart
You have little factual data to support your fears.
You have no reasonable path by which CO2 will not continue to rise for decades
You have no information to show you that any conditions that you fear can be avoided by the actions you have previously suggested.
You actually have no reasonable/reliable data to show that a warmer world will not benefitthe US or any particular nation more than it may harm that nation.
Rob Starkey | July 17, 2012 at 1:35 pm |
You have little factual data to support your fears.
Fears?! Fear-mongering? Bugbears? Bogeymen? Hobgoblins? Trolls? Monsters under the bed? Who said anything about fear?
I speak of COST, and of RISK. See? Entirely different thing. I’m not afraid of people who violate my property rights. I hold them in contempt, and seek redress. Free Riders don’t scare me. Corrupt politicians in the pocket of special interests aren’t panicking me. They’re outraging my sense of justice.
I can see, as you’re unfamiliar with the concept, you scrabble for alternate explanations. If you need help with developing a sense of justice, I recommend other activities than commenting on climate blogs.
As for ‘little factual data’, I am not certain of how you arrive at your comparator. Is the volume of data comprising BEST ‘little’? (I think so, taken on its own. Not too little for some purposes, but surprisingly little given how long we’ve known we ought be making more adequate record of our climate in a much denser grid than we do.) Are the ice cores ‘little’? They span the better part of a million years, and show good consiliency and robustness. The signs of snow cover, sea ice cover, glacial cover and permafrost reduction, are they ‘little’? The ice shelfs breaking off Iceland and Antarctica, ranging in size between twice Manhattan Island and Ireland? Are they little? Habitat shifts in animals and plants? CO2 field tests spanning decades? Four IPCC reports, and a fifth one coming? Observations of Venus and Mars? The geological records?
How many ‘little’ datasets need accumulate before they don’t come up as ‘little’? Considering that the ratio of studies unambiguously confirming AGW and other IPCC positions to the ratio of studies casting doubt on them is at least 5:1, and as much as 50:1, I’m confused by how you come to use the word ‘little’ in this context at all.
Size here, however, doesn’t matter. What matters is sufficiency. AGW is proved to at least six sigma. CO2 rise due human CO2E emission, even more confidently established. Little? Pfft. Dream on.
You have no reasonable path by which CO2 will not continue to rise for decades
I limit my scope to decades, why? And really, you haven’t been paying attention if you don’t know that I do indeed accept that there may be unproven but reasonable paths for anthropogenic CO2 mitigation. I am skeptical of them, they comprise the wooly field of geoengineering. I’m not convinced of the wisdom of experimenting with such activities, but since you’re saying something that is on its face patently false, I thought I’d correct you.
Not that it’s my issue to determine CO2 level. My issue is to see the Carbon Cycle resource privatized, and let everyone democratically determine CO2 level by their individual choices in the fair Market. Why do you object to democracy and Capitalism?
You have no information to show you that any conditions that you fear can be avoided by the actions you have previously suggested.
And again with the fear smear. You mischaracterize my position, and then attack the straw man. Do I seriously come across as ill-informed? Uninformed? Of a habit to act without information? Really?
You actually have no reasonable/reliable data to show that a warmer world will not benefitthe US or any particular nation more than it may harm that nation.
Yeah, I do, and I’ve presented it at Climate Etc. However, that’s not really the point. Accidental benefits to some don’t cancel negligent harms to any. Check out the fundamentals of the law of torts. Making surgeons rich by breaking the legs of a basketball team requiring them to be operated on is not going to save you from substantial liability.
Bart R: Yes, the earth has warmed, particularly in the 60° – 90° N latitude range since 1880. But 1880 was a relatively cold year. One could say the earth was cooler then. But where is your proof that ” AGW is proved to at least six sigma”? There are numerous studies that show that the earth was warmer in medieval times and colder in the LIA, most recently in a 2012 Scandinavian tree study. There was a rapid warming at northerly latitudes in the 1920s prior to buildup of CO2. Temperatures since 1976 have followed the El Nino cycle, not CO2. Temperatures have been stable for the past 13 years. Yes you are right that the preponderance of published studies lean toward the AGW position but that is the only way to get funding. And even if, as seems likely, AGW did contribute partly to warming since 1880, do we have a good understanding of future impacts if CO2 rises to various future levels? The website: http://www.spaceclimate.net/CO2.graphs.html shows some possible future trends. In order to keep CO2 below 450 ppm by year 2100, we need drastic (I use this word since purists object to “draconian”) cutbacks in carbon emissions immediately. I agree there are risks in allowing the CO2 concentration to grow in the future, but the impacts of drastic cutbacks in carbon emissions seem to be better established and are worse than the impacts of AGW from increases in CO2 concentration. I don’t agree with Starkey that AGW would be beneficial. I would like to see carbon emissions reduced. BAU in the 21st century is scary. But even more scary is inadequate energy to keep the world running.
Donald Rapp | July 19, 2012 at 9:52 am |
For my ‘proof’ of AGW to at least six sigma, I refer you to the collection of works amassed under the general geas of the reports of the IPCC, plus BEST, and to anyone in the world with blue eyes (caused by Rayleigh Scattering, the same effect as makes the sky blue, and which requires we recognize the effects of CO2 on radiative transfer in the IR wavebands of its absorbtivity). The day eyes and skies stop being blue, you might have an argument.
..1880 was a relatively cold year..
So? Is this David Wojick’s pendulum of temperature all over again? What influences and effects happened in, or prior to, 1880, we have very little reliable information about, except ice cores and a few other paleo reconstructions of lesser reliability and extent, plus geology. So what might have caused the cold conditions, or the cooling, or the warm conditions, or the warming, remain speculative. Like the speculation that interglacial dust acted like fertilizer to cause algae blooms to consume so much CO2 to be absorbed into the ocean as to lead to the ice ages (though that’s a pretty compelling hypothesis, as it stands, and perhaps worth study) is only speculation yet.
The evidence, the hypotheses, the inferences based on the observations we currently have tell us AGW is accurate or very nearly true, and we ought treat these conclusions as right until better evidence does not merely lead us to develop unproven alternate hypotheses, but also we have superior proofs of these alternatives. Otherwise, every logical conclusion is overthrown by the first fiction proposed.
And you.. all you do is propose fictions.
Dear Bart R.: I refer you to:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=donald+rapp
where you can order books like “Assessing Climate Change”, and “The Climate Debate” that show that the IPCC, BEST and your blue sky argument are weak, full of holes, and you are the one proclaiming fiction as fact. What has rather amazed me since I got interested in climatology about six years ago, is the lack of good data and models in climate science, the data being sparse, noisy and of inadequate duration, which contrasts to the assurance, certainty, and lack of doubt in conclusions drawn therefrom by climatologists, as if to imply the weaker the data, the stronger the conclusions. I don’t know how much GHG contributed to the warming of the last 120 years or how much further warming will result in the next 120 years. Neither do you. Neither does the IPCC. Neither does Jim Hansen. Neither does any of the 1000 assertive entries on this blog. Admit it finally. We just don’t know.
Bart > The evidence, the hypotheses, the inferences based on the observations we currently have tell us AGW is accurate or very nearly true
iow, CAGW. A laughable neo-religious fiction, repeated merely to boost the writer’s preference for a more politically dominated world regardless of whether it it warranted on scientific grounds or not (Ie indistinguishable from IPCC pro-political propaganda).
Ummm
Aren’t you rather missing out the bit about assessing the strength of the alarmist claims?
There used to be a bloke who wandered around the West End of London alarming theatre queues on how the world was about to end unless they immediately became vegetarians. As far as know few took his advice, and he ended before the world did.
It is not enough just to take drastic action ‘in case the alarmist predictions are right’. You are supposed to put some rational thought about them in as well.
But then, this is climatology, so I don’t expect much anyway….much better to run around like headless chickens expecting doomsday three weeks come next Tuesday and squawking about it.
Dear Latimer:
I was not arguing that the world should undergo draconian reductions in GHG emissions ‘in case the alarmists are right’. I was implying that the draconian reductions in emissions indicated by alarmists like James Hansen (for example) are not compatible with a modern technological industrial world. While the consensus may exist that rising GHG is a bad thing, I doubt that there is consensus on how to deal with the problem. In order to keep 21st century CO2 below 450 ppm, we would need an immediate drastic cutback in world usage of fossil fuels. This would not be technically compatible with a modern industrialized world, and it would not be politically or economically viable. There are a zillion commentaries on the consensus, but just what are the parties to the consensus agreeing to?
Donald Rapp | July 16, 2012 at 3:07 pm |
“In order to keep 21st century CO2 below 450 ppm, we would need an immediate drastic cutback in world usage of fossil fuels. This would not be technically compatible with a modern industrialized world, and it would not be politically or economically viable.”
I don’t agree.
If one is assuming that human emission of CO2 is mostly caused by fossil fuel emission, then we focus on which fossil fuel causes a considerable amount of these emissions. And that is coal. China is double US emission because of it’s coal use rather than it’s use “in general” of fossil fuels.
Coal use is for electrical production. For electrical production one can easily use nuclear energy [no emission] or natural gas [much lower emission]. Had the focus been on increasing the use of nuclear energy, then we could seen a 20% or more reduction in fossil fuel emission [by mainly using far less coal].
Now keeping CO2 below 450 ppm by year 2100 perhaps would be difficult. I think it require more modest change towards nuclear energy, particularly at this point in time with China already invested in a bunch of new coal power plants. So perhaps at this late stage it’s been made more difficult. One might need a revolution in costs of nuclear energy- so Nuclear energy always cheaper than coal, or even natural gas for this sort of situation. But I think most don’t think it’s possible to have CO2 level at or below 450 by 2100- so if was less than 500 ppm, that probably better than anyone expects, nor would this incite dire climate predictions.
gbaikie:
According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Energy_consumption.png
coal provides about 25% of the world’s energy. If most of this coal were replaced by natural gas, that would reduce carbon emissions by at most 20%. You are right that this would indeed be a significant step toward reduction of emissions (at what cost?). But considering the projected rise in world population and the industrialization of developing countries, world energy demand is expected to double by 2050 even with improvements in energy efficiency. According to Jim Hansen, the safe level is 350 ppm. Right now the world is emitting about 8 Gt/yr of C, and in order to hold the year-2100 level of CO2 below 450 ppm, the world would need to ramp down from the present level of 8 Gt/yr to less than 2 Gt/yr by 2050 and hold it below that level. A business-as-usual projection with greatly increased use of natural gas and further inclusion of renewables might suggest an emission rate of 10 Gt/yr in 2050, so reducing to 2 Gt/yr constitutes an 80% reduction from the BAU projection even with increased use of natural gas. Freezing the emission rate at 8 Gt/yr for the next 90 years results in a CO2 concentration of about 540 ppm in year-2100. There is no shortage of dire climate predictions at almost any future level of CO2.
“gbaikie:
According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Energy_consumption.png
coal provides about 25% of the world’s energy. If most of this coal were replaced by natural gas, that would reduce carbon emissions by at most 20%.”
Methane is CH4, it mostly burns hydrogen making water
Coal is mostly burning carbon
Your chart is to 2005, and the steep line going up. is mostly from China, and currently coal may be providing 25 to 30% of world’s energy but producing much higher percent of CO2 emission..
China burning about 4 billion tons of coal making about 8 billion tons of CO2. US at highest point burned about 1 billion tonnes of coal making twice the amount in CO2. China emission is twice US and is because it’s using a lot of coal. So coal burning of US and China making 10 billion tonnes of CO2, world is 30 billion. So that is about 1/3 global human emission of fossil fuels. Europe is increasing their coal use as are other countries. Europe increasing coal use mostly because idiot Kyoto agreement and corruption of policy meant to lower CO2 emission.
Anyway, about 1/2 of global CO2 is or about to be from coal burning.
But if replace coal with natural gas one would get a around 20% in global CO2 emission, as I am not suggesting we outlaw coal use, but instead lower costs to make nuclear power and do as we doing with fracking to increase natural gas, such policy could significantly lower coal use.
In US 40% of energy was made from coal, now it’s around 30% with natural gas replacing it and climbing to 30%, and we will get lower coal use as more natural gas is made.
“You are right that this would indeed be a significant step toward reduction of emissions (at what cost?).”
As say [not well], at this point, hard to do, if target is 450 by 2100.
I would very easy if 20 years ago the focus had been on increasing nuclear energy use.
But we don’t control China [and we don’t want to control China].
We largely created China by stupid domestic regulations- which no doubt some people thought was a no cost option to take. Because a lot people are idiots- particularly democrats.
So In my mind it’s possible we will not reach 450 ppm by 2100 for various reasons, which will not discuss. But in terms of targets I think, first we should not have some target century in the future, but if wants to plan 100 years into the future I think a 500 ppm would more doable.
If you accept 500 ppm and ask about costs.
It seem foolish not invest in technology that can reduce global CO2 which would have a low cost. I would not favor doing this on large scale, at the moment but would favor developing the technology so if it’s deemed desirable one has this option at a known risk and known cost.
So in terms of total program start to program end cost, somewhere around a few billion dollars could spent in fertilizing open ocean to encourage plant growth on small scale and studying results, etc.
Second I think more should done regarding methane hydrate ocean mining. Japan doing this, but other countries should also do this.
I think the huge benefits with having higher CO2 levels and don’t begin to have problem with below 450 ppm. But there also be benefit to causing more biomass in the ocean, so if reached 450 ppm and if there was enough knowledge of consequence of fertilizing large area of ocean and this could done low cost [or possibly as way make profit [no cost] then perhaps the public could see value in permitting or doing this.
If you shouldn’t count on fertilizing or getting large amount of Methane from ocean at a low cost. So one alternative paths.
An alternate path is something like what Bill gates doing small nuclear reactors- and small, cheap, reusable, safe.
More immediate could doing government work of making the cost building nuclear power plants cheaper. Which basically eliminating delays from after plan approved- allowing construction without years of unnecessarily delays- mainly court action intended to drive up cost of construction, due to political opposition to having any nuclear power.
Also encourage export of technology of fracking so other countries to use their natural gas resources.
Next china is simply going to run out of coal. Coal in China is about 12 times the cost of coal in US. This indicates 2 things. First they already having shortage. They have reached or nearing the idiot phrase “peak coal”. And the inherent problem of coal and that is it is costly to ship. Trains or trucks are not an efficient way to ship cheap fossil fuels. Coal has logistics problem in China.
And this logistic problem gets much worse if China imagines it going to import a significant amount of it’s coal. Coal is best used near where it’s mined.
So with domestic coal China will have huge and various problems using large amount of coals- and that will run out [probably] within 30 years. And would make a lot economic sense cut coal use within 20 years [maybe extend it to 40 year rather than 30].
So China using 4 billion tonnes or more of coal per year has about 20 year lifetime [probably at most].
it sure would nice to have lots of methane China could buy in about 20 years- probably what Japan has in mind.
Donald
My apologies if my comment was obtuse. I try to communicate clearly but seem to have failed in this case.
I asked- “What data should drive a reasonable person to the conclusion that a warmer world is worse overall for humanity over the long term?”
My point here is that the science community has not been able to reach a consensus on what the temperature is likely to increase by as a function of additional CO2 and that figure is essential to determine the net impacts to humanity over the long term. Understanding the rate of any warming in any specific area is a key to understanding whether humans will be harmed or helped and by what amount. Putting out a forecast that includes a margin of error that is insufficiently bounded is meaningless since the rates of temperature rise that could result would include results that would be both of no concern and potentially a great concern. The outputs of the models need to be reliable and sufficiently bounded to have meaning.
I asked- “Now to make it a bit more practical and unfortunately more difficult- What data should drive the leaders of any particular nation to conclude that their nation will be worse off or better off overall over the long term?” In order to determine whether the people of an individual nation suffer harms or benefits will depend upon the changes in temperature, wind and rainfall patterns that would occur in that particular nation. There are NO MODELS today that can provide us with reliable information to determine these impacts. In spite of there be no reliable models to describe the changes in temperature, wind and rainfall patterns, a great deal has been written in peer reviewed papers stating how much worse humanity as a result of it getting warmer.
Dear Rob Starkey:
I am not disagreeing with anything you said. But the subject of this thread is consensus and I think perhaps your message deals more with possible
benefits of global warming, rather than the nature and value of consensus. One of my points about consensus is that most people working in climatology are specialists and probably do not have a broad synoptic view of the many aspects of climatology. So, a consensus of climatologists does not represent a consensus of broadly knowledgeable generalists. I worked for many years at JPL in developing space missions. We had many specialists working on a project (power, propulsion, navigation, communication, mechanisms, …) but the glue that held it together was system engineering. One aspect of system engineering was integration and compatibility of specialties. Another was exhaustively identifying all the things that could go wrong, and providing avoidance or remedies for every one. Doubt and skepticism during the design stage was not only tolerated but encouraged. Where are the system engineers in climate science? I don’t see it in the peer reviewed literature. I begin to see some of it on judithcurry.com but the blogosphere is too diffuse and full of ego to fulfill the role effectively. I do salute Judith Curry. Her website provides great topics, and good contributions (not one-sided). Unfortunately it takes forever to wade through the many blog entires to find an occasional nugget.
Donald
As an aerospace systems engineer I share many of your views. To claim there is a consensus, the person making the claim needs to specify exactly what issue/topic they believe the consensus has been reached on.
Imo, the only issue where there is a general consensus is the concept of AGW overall. There is no consensus on the rate of warming, whether it will be harmful or benefit particular nations, and what steps should be taken.
The impass is a bit silly since many no regrets policy actions could be taken.
Hi Donald
I’m delighted to say that my first job title in IT was as a ‘Systems Engineer’. We too tried to wade through the many technicalities of the subject while still focussing on the big picture of what the systems we designed and installed were commissioned to do. And to make sure that they did so.
You ask ‘where are the systems engineers in climate science’?
The answer appears to be outside it and in the blogosphere. Apart (perhaps) from Pachauri, there is nobody at all inside the field to take a broad view of it. It is populated solely by tekkies (*).This is a major weakness. Like a NASA mission without a Flight Controller or a military mission without a general or a strategist.
(*) No general disrespect to tekkies meant. But for a team to be successful you need more than just technical abilities. You need managerial and organisational skill as well.
Joe Sixpack | July 17, 2012 at 10:35 am |
No doubt you will be pondering equally seriously on the historical origins of the term ‘denier’? And giving us the benefit of your condemnation of such a wrong-headed description?
Because the relevancy of the one to the other exists how?
But why don’t I help you with that question.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=etymology+denier
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/Denier first published in 1828 in its modern sense.
1828.
That’s over 110 years before World War II. I mentioned that because it’s not plain people making the sort of mistake of getting upset about being referred to as Climate Deniers would know when World War II started, or how to find a dictionary, or how to use Google, or the difference between ‘before’ and ‘after’, because if they did they’d never make such a bald-faced assertion as there’s anything offensive or inaccurate about the usage or linking it to a specific historical context.
Now, if someone called you Climate Kafiri, that’d be pretty serious.
But really, it’s like being upset by being called Science Illiterate because many cannibal tribes are illiterate, or being upset about being Rhetorically Malformed because Richard III had a hunchback and was a villain. Wouldn’t you rather be upset that you’ve been discovered to be bending rhetorical devices inappropriately, exposed for scientific ignorance, and caught in gainsaying established and solidly-founded conclusions based on well-grounded evidence, than making up stuff that is completely irrelevant?
Like ‘denier’ is irrelevant to ‘draconian’?
Donald Rapp | July 17, 2012 at 11:50 am |
For me, “draconian” means generally a primitive economy, and specifically to me, no air conditioning or heat, no car, intermittent power, and a horse and buggy to get around.
So long as you’re being so completely rational, grounded in reality, keeping such a fair and balanced perspective, and not being insanely alarmist about Lovecraftian Economics, who can argue with you?
And again, from Bart R we get ridiculous remarks:
Bart R acts as though the fact the word “denier” existed before WWII means people who feel there is a Holocaust association are morons. Of course, anyone who is remotely familiar with how the term “denier” came to be used in climate discussions would know it started with a person making an explicit association between the Holocaust and denier.
But hey, apparently people are idiots if they think the usage of a word can change.
@bart r
Your historical analysis is way off the mark.
The meanings and usage of words change with time and with context.
Example. The ‘n****r’ word was in common usage in the 1600s in the US. Not meant offensively, but as a description. Within my lifetime, it was possible to go to an art shop and, equally without offence, ask for a tube of n****r black paint. ‘The n****r in the woodpile’ was a common expression in the UK as recently as 25 years ago. But nowadays such usage would be considered very offensive and is pretty much unknown.
So, interesting though the historical basis of both ‘draconian’ and ‘denier’ may be, it is the current meanings that apply to writings made in 2012, not those of the past.
Your point fails.
Joe Sixpack | July 18, 2012 at 1:40 am |
Did you really, seriously, just now compare the plight of the poor oppressed nonconsensus climatology outliers, dismissalists, contrarians and kooks to the history of Black America?
Really?
That’s where you’re going?
Amazing. That’s really your perspective on all this?
Brandon Shollenberger | July 18, 2012 at 12:05 am |
Of course, anyone who is remotely familiar with how the term “denier” came to be used in climate discussions would know it started with a person making an explicit association between the Holocaust and denier.
And to illustrate how more than remotely familiar with how the discussion evolved, I can even name the person making the explicit association between the Holocaust and the term denier.
It was one Siegfried Singer (that’s Dr. Fred Singer, to you), who addressed charges that he was a “paid tobacco denier” by wrapping himself in the shroud of his persecuted people (and mine) and turned the charge into a sign that he was the victim of a racist smear by the startled accuser, who had no clue the word was about to be redefined out from under him.
While I can’t read Dr. Singer’s mind, and I don’t know he was intentionally playing on emotions by subverting the language to suit his needs, there is a startling cluster of such redefinitions and subversions surrounding the man’s career, to the extend I feel obliged when discussing him to link to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_6vDLq64gE out of regard for my audience.
Bart R, bravo at making a comment which completely fails to respond to anything I said while haughtily acting like you rebutted my remark!
Brandon Shollenberger | July 19, 2012 at 12:59 am |
Wouldn’t that be for people who are neither you nor me to decide for themselves?
Heck, they can even look it up for themselves.
Bart R:
Uh, no? Why would it be up to everyone but the people talking? Everyone can agree or disagree with what I say, but I am part of everyone. So are you. We both get to decide for ourselves whether or not what I said is right, just like everybody else does.
Of course, whether or not I was right has absolutely nothing to do with what people decide. My statement is true or false based solely upon logic, not popular opinion.
It would be difficult for people to “look it up for themselves” when I said your entire response was a non-sequitur. Speaking of, there is a degree of humor in responding to an accusation of using a non-sequitur by making a non-sequitur. It’s like a person claiming to show he didn’t lie by telling a lie.
Donald Rapp | July 16, 2012 at 2:05 pm |
Why “draconian”?
What specific justification and evidence do you have for throwing around a term meaning in its historical origins a set of laws so absolute and harsh in their tyranny as to call for the death of the accused for even minor transgressions?
If only draconian measures were available, you’d have a leg to stand on. If we believed the world is full of people who are eager to submit to new draconian measures, you might have a point.
And sure, a few extremists hurl about proposals that are not merely draconian but also would be ineffectual; sometimes because they’re merely irrational or ignorant, sometimes because they have an ulterior motive, and sometimes for the FUD value of confusing the efforts to reach political consensus. That last one, let’s call the Australian School of Economics.
Rational, measured, democratic, advantageous, proven, known measures to reduce GHG emissions or compensate those affected by the emissions at the expense of those who make lucrative profit from emitting are far more likely to be sought, and to work. British Columbia’s fee and dividend “Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax” has lowered the business and income taxes of its citizens (that’d be the opposite of “draconian”, I think) while that economy (the size of South Carolina’s) has thrived for half a decade now. No ruin. No downturn. Success and wealth for the whole economic system flow out of fee and dividend mechanisms.
No doubt you will be pondering equally seriously on the historical origins of the term ‘denier’? And giving us the benefit of your condemnation of such a wrong-headed description?
Thanks Joe S. To Bart R.: For me, “draconian” means generally a primitive economy, and specifically to me, no air conditioning or heat, no car, intermittent power, and a horse and buggy to get around. To you, it seems to be a definition in a book.
“Rational, measured, democratic, advantageous, proven, known measures…”
Bart R, why don’t you tell your fairy stories to your little statist friends who can pretend to believe them.
Andrew
Donald Rapp,
What an excellent point:
Where are the system engineers in climate science?
Scientists think it is the IPCC. But the IPCC is nothing like systems engineering.
Consensus is not what’s needed. System engineering is what is needed.
“Direct politics is pretty notable by its absence on this blog. ” ?? Really?
You obviously don’t read Peter Lang’s comments. But I suppose I can’t blame you for that :-)
But there are plenty of others too.
@tempterrain
‘You obviously don’t read Peter Lang’s comments’
I do read Peter Lang’s comments. Though I don’t agree with everything he says, I see that he calls for a rational fact and number-based evaluation of the risks, costs and benefits we may or may not be facing because of ‘climate change’..
If you consider that such calls are ‘political’, then I fear you are using your own definition of the word. Seems that anybody who disagrees with you is ‘political’ in your lexicon. Perhaps you’d put a wee sub or superscript by it next time so that we can identify it as your own special term and not to be confused with common usage.
But overall, I considerably prefer Peter’s approach to your purely emotional and fear-based kneejerks. Anybody – such as yourself – who can parade Greg Craven’s re-discovery of Pascal’s Wager (pub 1670) as a breakthrough in decision making has left the logical and rational far far behind.
Latimer,
Pascals wager concerns a reason to believe in God. But no-one can force themselves to believe in anything in particular just for some supposed gain. It just isn’t possible.
On the other hand, if you even think there may be a hungry crocodile living in the creek, even though you believe it to be unlikely on balance, it still makes sense to avoid swimming across if there is an alternative such as a bridge or a ferry available by walking upstream. Its not too hard to force yourself to do that. Any sensible person would at least look for an alternative.
If you follow Greg’s Craven logic with the crocodile problem you’ll agree that it makes perfect sense not to swim across. But of course you could be lucky. The crocodile may decide he’s just not hungry that day.
Peter Lang,
You seem to approve of engineers rather more than scientists. Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t they probably a bit more conservative than scientists? If the bridge will take 10 tonnes, according to theory, wouldn’t they impose a limit of 5?
If an hypothetical Earth’s system engineer were asked to calculate a safe limit for CO2, and other GH, gas concentrations, is it really likely that we’d get an answer of: “Anything you like. Just pump it up as high as you can She’ll be right mate!”
Donald Rapp
Excellent point. Succinctly put. This really is the crux of the issue.
To put things in perspective, consider the two graphs shown at
http://www.spaceclimate.net/CO2.graphs.html
The upper graph shows the history of CO2 emission (Gt/yr) to 2010, and five scenarios for future emission. The uppermost curve is a BAU projection (IS92) heavily based on coal with gradual infusion of renewables. The next curve assumes replacement of much of the coal by natural gas but still BAU. The next curve is hold 2010 level (8 GT/yr) constant in future. Then there are two downward ramps.
The lower graph shows a rough estimate of the resultant CO2 concentrations in the 21st century for each of the five emission scenarios. The year-2100 CO2 concentrations are:
IS92 BAU: 750 ppm
2012 BAU (nat. gas): 680 ppm
Freeze at 2010: 570 ppm
Ramp downward: 480 ppm
Fast ramp: 450 ppm
Also Hansen’s “safe level” of 350 ppm. The fast ramp goes from 8 Gt/yr in 2010 to 4 Gt/yr in 2035 to 2 Gt/yr in 2060. During this period the earth adds 2 billion people and doubles energy demand.
While the climate is extremely complicated and the science is extremely complicated, the policy response does not have to be complicated, and nor should it be. Because, if it is complicated it will get no traction.
I suggest the policy response could be facilitated by getting policy relevant information distributed widely (I have a suggestion I’ll put in a separate comment).
What we need to know for policy, is, first, what are the expected damages and damage costs of ‘no mitigation’ policies (e.g. total to 2050, 2100, 2200 by world, region, country.). This can be done on best currently available information and updated as information improves. (No mitigation policy means adaptation instead).
Second, we need to know what are the estimated abatement costs for different mitigation policies? Importantly, we need to know what is the realistic probability that the proposed mitigation policy would achieve the purported results (of reduced damages).
We also need to know, quite separately, the estimated cost for an insurance policy such that if the probability of high consequence impacts increases, we can implement the insurance policy. I suspect the optimal policy may be adaptation together with RD&D on technology solutions to provide insurance in case the projections change and the threat of high damage consequences increases. The Copenhagen Consensus has been advocating this approach for a long time. I’ve suggested a major component of a relatively low-cost insurance policy here: http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/06/05/conservatives-who-think-seriously-about-the-planet/#comment-111744
In short, we need policy relevant information. Policy relevant information can be presented simply.
My suggestion:
Purpose:
Educate the “interested, intelligent, non specialists” about what is relevant and most important for policy decisions about CO2 mitigation.
Assist media, public and policy makers to focus on what’s important.
How?
Provide an easy to use web tool/calculator that allows users to easily input and change parameters and see the output as a probability distribution. Step 1, covered here, is just the damage cost of no mitigation.
Step 1 – Damage Costs if ‘no-mitigation’ (total to 2050 or 2100 or 2200)
The tool’s features would include:
1. Output: PDF of probability versus damage cost.
2. Inputs: PDFs of the important inputs. such as:
• GDP growth rate (g(TFP) )
• Rate of decarbonisation (g(CO2 / GDP) )
• Equilibrium temperature-sensitivity coefficient (T2xCO2)
• Damage parameter (DamCoeff)
• Price of backstop technology (P(back) )
• Asymptotic global population (Pop)
• Transfer coefficient in carbon cycle (CarCyc)
• Total resources of fossil fuels (Fosslim)
Source: Nordhaus (2008) “A question of Balance”, Table 7-1, p127 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf
Other inputs would be to select a country, region or the world. This would automatically load the default parameters for that country, region or world. Advanced options allows user to change the default parameters.
3. User interface: The inputs would be chosen by the user from a selection of charts for each input parameter, like these:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/box-10-2-figure-1.html
with ability to change the shape of the curve and display the statistics that describe the PDF.
The UK DECC provides several calculators such as this for mix of electricity generation types and total CO2 emissions.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/2050_sim/2050_sim.aspx
http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk/pathways/1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111/primary_energy_chart
Peter Lang,
All this sounds quite reasonable, of course. Obviously we have to decide on the best possible mix between adaptation and mitigation.
But, it looks very much like you are denier, following the same path as people like Max (manacker). You start off denouncing all climate science as a hoax or a scam, but then you quickly realise that won’t get you anywhere.
So, afterwrads its a classic case of the wolf and the sheep’s clothing. You try to make a more measured case that adaptation is highly preferable to any mitigation.
But why should we believe either you or Max? We know what you want. Its a policy of no mitigation anywhere, ever, on GH gas emissions. And we know why you want it. You think the IPCC, and consensus scientific position, are part of a political conspiracy. Your views are motivated by politics not science. Its going to be very hard for anyone to ever take you seriously when you try to pretend otherwise.
Temp
You keep trying to pretend that that political body the IPCC and its resultant political consensus is scientific. Your views are motivated by politics not science. Its going to be very hard for anyone to ever take you seriously when you try to pretend otherwise.
@tempterrain
You keep on harping – to the point of possible paranoia – about ‘deniers’ having ‘political motives’.
What I find difficult to understand is why you think that people primarily interested in politics would abandon that interest and spend so much time discussing ‘climate science’.
Seems a bizarre thing to do. Those with politics a a prime motivation are no doubt perfectly capable of arguing their political case. And there are plenty of other places where they can do so.
Direct politics is pretty notable by its absence on this blog. It rarely gets up as high as a secondary, let alone a primary, object of debate.
How do you explain this apparent anomaly? And what evidence do you have that your assertions are correct?
Little Lattie is as naive as an infant.
tempterrain … keep[s] on harping – to the point of possible paranoia – about ‘deniers’ having ‘political motives’.
This is a conscious attempt to try and
(a) confuse skeptics with deniers (the former hugely outnumbering the latter)
(b) disguise that alarmism is 95% politically motivated (hardly surprising, given that it’s politically funded and organized)
Latimer,
To paraphrase Joseph Heller, I may be paranoid but that doesn’t mean the motivativations of so-called climate change skeptics aren’t largely political.
Tomcat,
Its good that you at least acknowledge the fact that climate change deniers do at least exist.
“The more people can see the CAGW advocacy sites for what they really are – spin merchants for socialist/progressive/Left ideology – the better.”
Would you say this was said by a genuine sceptic or a climate change denier?
> Tomcat, Its good that you at least acknowledge the fact that climate change deniers do at least exist.
Tempterrain, it’s good that you’ve stopped inventing strawmen who deny the existence of deniers.
tempterrain | July 18, 2012 at 8:07 am said: ”Would you say this was said by a genuine sceptic or a climate change denier?”
Tempterrain, ”deniers” are GLOBAL warming deniers! NOT Climatic Changes Deniers!!! Your question / definition is LOADED!!! Anybody denying that the climate is changing; they are either blind, or belong to the genera ”Fake Skeptics” – Climate constantly changes, some places for better / others for worse. Denier, denies categorically, that the overall GLOBAL temp goes up and down for more than few minutes!!! It’s a concocted lie; same as calling the deniers ”climate change deniers” that is a lie also! For how many people this simple statement is too complicated? DENIER = NO GLOBAL WARMINGS – YES CLIMATIC CHANGES.
Deniers are a camp, in-between the Warmist and the Fake Skeptics (golden middle) Fake Skeptics are the ones who believe 101% in the phony GLOBAL warmings / Warmist believe in 90% possibility of GLOBAL warming in 100y. Deniers believe in ZERO GLOBAL WARMINGS / climatic changes never stopped, not for one day in the last 4 billion years, and never will.
Warmist & Fakes also belong to the same subspecies as: ”Climate from Changing Stoppers” Sometime it’s impossible to see any difference between those two faiths – same as the difference between two cheeks on a same ass – there must be some difference; but I can’t notice, what?
I’m glad to clear up those MISLEADING / LOADED COMMENTS
Donald Rapp,
@ July 18, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Thank you for your reply. Did you see my longer reply to your comment @ July 17, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Yes to all that. But what is the consequence? If it is no big deal, then so what? The answer is very dependent on the consequence. James Hansen’s 350 ppm danger limit is nothing more than scaremongering, IMO.
Scary adjectives, and numbers plucked from you know where as Hansen has done, are unpersuasive to me.
As I’ve posted on many previous comments, I interpret work by Nordhaus, Tol and others, to suggest AGW is not all that bad and will be largely handled by adaption and transition to nuclear power this century. To convince me otherwise I would need to have a better understanding of the costs and benefits of proposed mitigation policies.
P. Lang: The website: http://www.spaceclimate.net/CO2.graphs.html
shows several possible future scenarios for carbon emissions and the consequent increases in CO2 concentration. You can pick your poison (so to speak). The economic and technical dislocations resulting from drastic cutbacks in carbon emissions are difficult to predict. The first law of economics is that given two economists, you get two opinions. The second law is that they are both wrong. I hope you are right that “AGW is not all that bad” but I am almost sure you are not.
Donald Rapp,
Thank you for your reply. You say:
OK. So can you answer these questions? (I provide some links to references that are influencing my thinking.)
1. How bad is it?
Nordhaus (2008) “A Question of Balance”
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf
Nordhaus (2012) “Economic policy in the face of severe tail events”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2011.01544.x/full
2. How much should we spend?
“What the Carbon tax and ETS will really cost”
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
3. What is that expenditure intended to achieve (what are the measures of success; e.g. in terms of changes to the climate and changes to the rate of change of sea level)?
4. What is the probability that if we spend that money it will fix the climate and stop sea level rising (or achieve whatever the measurable goals are)?
5. What are the other consequences of spending that money on AGW?
“Why the Decision to Tackle Climate Change Isn’t as Simple as Al Gore Says”
http://www.tnr.com/blog/critics/75757/why-the-decision-tackle-climate-change-isn%E2%80%99t-simple-al-gore-says
6. What are the other risk we face and what is our risk management strategy for them?
World Economic Forum “Global Risks 2012”
http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-2012-seventh-edition
“It is time to abandon the concept of consensus in favor of open debate of the arguments themselves and discussion of a broad range of policy options that include bottom up approaches to decreasing vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events and developing technologies to expand energy access.”
I love this statement right up until the “discussion of policy options that include/….approached to decreasing vulnerability etc etc…”
I’m sorry. It sounds good, but when you get right down to it, isn’t this just more pie in the sky? There’s no evidence right now that Co2 is doing anything at all to increase extreme weather or climate events of any kind. What technologies would we even be legitimately talking about at this point?
Pokerguy, “I love this statement right up until the “discussion of policy options that include/….approached to decreasing vulnerability etc etc…”
How about, “discussion of policy options on less controversial means of limiting potential climate impact while stimulating local and regional solutions to multifaceted issues: land use, conservation farming, water resource conservation, urban heat island mitigation, black carbon and cost effective cleaner energy solutions.”
De-emphasize the CO2 tunnel vision to encourage common sense stewardship.
I suggest that the point is that extreme weather and climate events will happen with or without any additional warming or cooling caused by mankind’s activities. Therefore, it is a “no regrets” option to decrease vulnerability to weather extremes.
I suggest revising Captdallas to
“discussion of policy options on less controversial means of limiting potential extreme weather impacts while stimulating local and regional solutions to multifaceted issues: land use, conservation farming, water resource conservation, urban heat island mitigation, black carbon, cost effective cleaner energy solutions, and developing technologies to expand energy access efficiently.”
Roger, it’s only “no regrets” if the expected risk-adjusted returns from the vulnerability-decreasing measures exceed those from alternative uses of resources. Government agencies are notorious for “gold-plating,” i.e. for building to standards far exceeding what would be appropriate. The options would all need to be subject to cost-benefit analysis (and, CBA-nay-sayers, CBA can take account of impacts which can’t readily be given a monetary value).
Faustino
Point taken but at least the risk-adjusted returns for potential extreme weather events has an expected value. Compare that to mitigation costs in the US when other countries have no intention of reducing their emissions. In that case you are always dividing by zero.
It is how the consenus treats skeptic says it all.We saw that play out with Hurricane Hunter Bill Gray and how the left treated Kyoto fighter, Bush the Great. Achtung baby.
I’m just uncertain;
Consensus ain’t convincin’.
Fear cold, not the warm.
============
I think a tiny bit on the history of science and how the use of technology can cause big problems.
False positives are common in all demographic data mining exercises; with genetic studies being under the spotlight following the explosion in gene-chip technology. Data, computers and poor statistical expertise is a recipe for disaster.
The linear response of cell damage to ionizing radiation is thoroughly disproven in vito and in vivo (see the Aircrew upregulation of BER and antioxidant pathways), yet is still used by regulators.
The size of the human genome was a shock to the ‘pure’ geneticists, but not so much to the protein chemists.
The huge amount of tainted data obtained using the ‘wrong’ cell lines should bring no comfort to anyone; at least the ATCC have taken a lead and are now testing their catalog.
X-Ray crystallographers not only deposit their derived structures, but MUST, deposit all their election density data in a public archive. Anyone can download any reported structure and see if they can reconstruct the same coordinates.
The North American and European DNA/RNA/Protein sequence archives come with user friendly search engines and you can find any sequence of DNA/RNA/protein that has ever been publish, and much not published. BLAST is a blast and open to anyone, anytime.
Before a consensus can be reached, the terms need to be defined.
The IPCC defined “climate change” as the changes due to mankind: hence the whole debate was skewed by the assumption that all climate changes are due to man.
I agree. That bias needs to be removed as an important facilitating step to acceptance that what IPCC is not biased.
Yes! Very important.
Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. …
That’s GLOBAL climate change (any change in global climate over time). Climate change, on the other hand, includes ANY climate change. When you travel from one climate zone to another, you experience climate change.
Starting with a statement by a politician isn’t a promising start.
It sets a tone of politics rather than science.
And then the NIPPC……..oh, dear. Then referring to the NIPPC’s 30,000 scientists (highly misleading) claim, which is of course it’s own rather ironic appeal to consensus.
These add nothing and distract from the more considered later discussion.
Clever Michael, but I say false equivalency re the NIPCC and what you see as its own ironic appeal to consensus. What do you want them to do, write 30 000 individual letters of dissent?
Michael,
Seems people can see when you’re making an effort:
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2012/07/gold-amdst-dross.html
You can do better than offer us ironic facepalm moments.
Please take time to explain why the claim you underlined is highly misleading.
Think about all those who do not know why.
My impression of that list, without reading right through, is that not everyone on it was a scientist with relevant expertise. It seemed to be in part a number-gathering exercise as a counter to the IPCC claiming legitimacy for its findings because x thousand scientists supported them. The 32,000 isn’t a strong point except to note that a considerable number of people, many of them highly qualified, dispute the claimed consensus, making it of questionable value.
Faustino, that’s being too kind.
Anyone could have signed it – all they had to do was tick the box that they were a ‘scientist’. And they seemed pretty liberal as to what constituted a ‘scientist’. Could be anyone with a B.Sc or “equivalent”, whatever the hell that might.
The accountability and transparency here is zero.
It’s no more than PR from a lobby group.
I think it’s pretty poor that Judith is so unskeptical to take this claim at face value and present it as a fact.
It’s a technique from the worst of churnalism.
PR from a lobby group
ie no different to the IPCC.
“PR from a lobby group
ie no different to the IPCC.”
Did IPCC actually have list of 1000 with names?
Et tu, IPCC?
Et tu? Mmm … the IPCC is hardly a mere accomplice in the assassination (of genuine climatology). Its look has always been of the lean and hungry variety.
To add to my own point, here is the answer I found back this morning:
> In the larger debate, we each play a role. The ground swell of support or rejection will be made up of thousands of tiny, almost inconsequential interactions, not just by the major players known to all, but among the millions of anonymous folks that no one knows about. Folks like Kendra. Or Marco. Or myself. Or your neighbors, the parents picking up their kids at school, or the barista that pours your coffee.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/27190159226
Snarkiness is oftentimes self-defeating.
Not that I don’t understand the urge, mind you.
You could have stopped with the Eban quote. It says everything.
Dr. Curry, don’t change a word. Thoughtful and well phrased given the hornet’s nest into which you go.
I offer in support of your thesis a very personal anecdote about why ‘consensus’ science can be erroneous. In 2005 I was reviewing some energy storage science and ran across a class of devices (electrochemical double layer capacitors) that had much promise. EDLC ‘consensus’ science goes back to Ludwig von Helmholtz (1880s) and the origins of lightning.
Literally everyone ‘knew’ that mesoporous surface was key to improving EDLC performance. Except that from 1993 on no one had succeeded. This included efforts in the US, Japanese, and Korean national labs, and in materials systems including activated carbons, carbon aerogels, carbon nanotubes, carbide derived carbons, templated carbons, and (after Geim’s 2004 discovery that won a Nobel prize) graphenes. Nothing worked. Even though these materials definitely improved mesoporous surface.
As an outsider (not ‘knowing’ the consensus theory), I just looked at the experimental data. What the consensus said was not what the data said. Several issuing patents, several years of materials development, and much consensus rejection later, we are building a world scale pilot line for materials at least 40% better than anything ever before. That business could be close to a billion dollars in revenues by 2020. And it directly reduces global warming by cutting carbon dioxide emissions…
The point is not electrocarbons. It is their analogy to climate science. I looked at ‘all’ data on UTH (and GCM proxy UTrH), and on clouds. Why? Because all radiative balance equations say those are the two most significant atmospheric feedbacks, from which all else follows. The data do not match the GCMs, or published AGW ‘theory’. Selection bias is evident. That almost always says some agenda is at work.
I cannot speak to when climate science made possible wrong turns. I carefully traced the wrong turns in ELDC. The first was made in 1924. The second was made in 1948. The third was made in 1974. The fourth was made in 1975. After that, the accumulation of slight but fundamental errors was written in stone as the ‘consensus’. Except it was wrong.
Just like the fundamental feedbacks of present GCMs can be shown (with much less precision) to be ‘wrong’. Dr. Curry posted my views on crop yields, and on UTH. Dr. Curry could post my views on sensitivity. Clouds are reserved for my next book. Research ICOADS and ISCCP observations versus GCMs yourselves. Do not take at face value what consensus papers and comments assert. Data is still just data.
Regards
‘Lukewarm’ Rud Istvan
“I am especially hoping for suggestions for the last section “Ways forward.””
ENSO variance decomposition using:
a) variable-extent complex-wavelets.
b) LOD, AAM, tropical SST gradients, total column ozone, QBO, & solar variables (incl. solar wind & heliospheric current sheet (HCS) Earth-crossings).
Another thought pointed to the precise question concerning your article’s conclusions. There is no such thing as a ‘consensus’ in science. There are well established and fully proven basic ‘laws’ (Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Boltzmann, Heisenberg). These are not a ‘consensus’, because anyone who doubts them should be consigned to the lunatic fringe. And then there is the rest– which people spend their lives researching. ‘Consensus’ under conditions other than ‘laws’ is merely a human effort to hide objective uncertainty behind a collective fiction. That works in politics, not science.
Climate change has hardly achieved the status of an experimental physical ‘law’ despite Hansen, Mann, and ilk efforts to assert it as so.
There is the crux of your problem and your essay.
Regards
Rud Istvan
There are well established and fully proven basic ‘laws’ (Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Boltzmann, Heisenberg). These are not a ‘consensus’, because anyone who doubts them should be consigned to the lunatic fringe.
I take exception to the mention of Darwin. For a start, there is no Darwinian law. Evolution has occurred over billions of years, to be sure, but the theory (not law) of Natural Selection as its primary mechanism is in my view very much open to question.
The relevant point in the present context is that by mentioning Darwin, one is going with a consensus that is not unchallengeable. We still don’t know what the primary mechanism is for evolution. Never has Natural Selection been observed to produce macroevolutionary changes. The nearest evidence, I’d say, is microevolutionary–e.g. the formation of ring species.
By saying that people who make observations such as I have done “should be consigned to the lunatic fringe”, you are doing exactly what climate consensualists do when they call people “deniers”. As is the case with “deniers”, everyone who dissents is labelled with the same, undifferentiated and pejorative category name.
Hence objection to a consensus (such as the incontrovertibility of Natural Selection) places everyone from creationists to reasoned doubters (and there are some with serious scientific credentials) in the same grab bag. It’s a mechanism for isolating dissenters and discouraging intelligent questioning.
Likewise, Paul Bain’s recent paper in Nature effectively placed everyone who didn’t support fullblown CAGW (including lukewarmers such as you self-describe) into the same, undifferentiated loony bin. However, have you cause to be indignant about that, seeing as you have demonstrated a similar tendency wrt Natural Selection?
The real issue with “consensus” is that it all too easily becomes a political means of controlling dissention, which has the effect of retarding scientific progress by stifling the freedom to question. It’s one thing to seek consensus as a means to come up with a response to a real and urgent problem (e.g, unambiguous identification of an asteroid that is on a collision course with earth), and another as a means to minimise or even exclude opposition to views on which reputations have been built and ongoing funding depends.
There’s very little, if anything, in science that can’t be intelligently questioned. And the evidence is that intelligent questioning is a significant driver of scientific progress. It should be actively encouraged. Rupert Sheldrake, like him or loathe him, has come up with a suggestion for “institutionalising” intelligent questioning. Namely, that a fixed, small proportion of funding (even a few percent would make a difference) should be allocated across the board specifically for investigation of non-consensus possibilities. There’d probably also need to be increased readiness of journals to accept dissenting papers. It should be part of the culture to have some recognised place for dissention by bona-fide scientists.
One point to bear in mind is that small amounts given to investigate different views can be highly cost-effective. Hundreds of scientists following consensus research may lead to much duplication (not necessarily a bad thing, of course) of effort.
Why can’t we recognise and institutionalise dissent, and back that up with modest funding? There are enough historical examples, I suspect, of cases where dissent led to significant scientific progress. Sure, dissenters aren’t always right, but then nor are consensualists.
Michael,
Strong reasoning throughout your post! Your distillation should be emphasized over and over again, ” a fixed, small proportion of funding should be allocated across the board specifically for investigation of non-consensus possibilities. There’d probably also need to be increased readiness of journals to accept dissenting papers. It should be part of the culture to have some recognised place for dissention by bona-fide scientists”.
You have put everything in the perfect perspective.
I’m flattered, Garry. But remember, the idea originated with Sheldrake (I’m one of those who love his work, btw, but even if one hates it, the suggestion has much to commend it).
Rudyard,
I do doubt.
The “LIMITED” technology they had to create the laws and theories that are currently being followed is incorrect when motion is applied.
To study something inert and studying something in motion generates a whole different effect of parameters. Many NEVER in consideration.
But you follow this without a thought to it being correct or not.
Is that not making these into a religion of faith?
Rather than improve our knowledge base, the defense of these laws and theories are utmost to ANY facts or evidence!
Excellent summary. Shouldn’t there be some discussion of WHY the consensus developed? (Huge government research funding, prestige (Nobel prizes), noble cause corruption, desire of less developed countries for foreign aid…)
No, I don’t think so. Dr Curry has done a great job on the subject she has been given. Enough shibboleths to slay this way. Any intelligent reader will at once ask the why question and begin a new voyage of discovery.
Would these intelligent readers also wonder why the NIPCC report felt compelled to list 30,000 ‘scientists’ as agreeing with it? These ‘scientists’ being comprised of anyone who claimed to have a BSc (with absolutely no checking of the veracity of this, their knowledge of climate science or even the facts of their existence)?
The beauty of the voyage of discovery having read this excellent piece and asking oneself why is that everyone’s journey is different. Some may find their way to the NIPCC and take a dim view of its list of 30,000, whether scientists or not. Some may find their way to Donna Laframboise’s brilliant book on the IPCC. The more mathematically minded may find Nic Lewis’s recent explorations of the IPCC treatment of climate sensitivity right at the core of how badly ‘consensus’ thinking has corrupted decent scientific practice. As I say, the journey is different for everyone.
The very least of those 30,000 signatories doubtless know a lot more about science than a numerous ‘Professors’ who hide their data and otherwise fiddle outcomes, or who express no regret at other doing so.
Come to think of it, your average 10-yearold could teach ‘Professor’ Phil Jones & pals a think or two about integrity in science.
And the average 8 year old could probably induct said Phil into the basic mysteries of Excel…. :-(
That seems a bit exhaustive [in both meanings] but I suppose should quite informative to some people.
re:
• [Political failure of international negotiations on climate treaties, which relied on consensus to power strategy (need refs)] INCOMPLETE”
Though it does not seem to fit with article. And isn’t a reference.
In terms of treaties regarded to GW, I think revisiting NPT, with emphasis on means of help nations develop nuclear energy could be a topic for a treaty.
Also a treaty to dealing with fertilizing ocean and other kinds technology which “terraform” earth could a topic useful treaty in regards to GW.
“[Political failure of international negotiations on climate treaties, which relied on consensus to power strategy (need refs)] INCOMPLETE”
Take another stab at this.
So fundamental reason of political failure was US didn’t sign it:
“The treaty has yet to go into effect, due in large part to the lack of ratification by the United States. The United States sees the treaty as having fatal flaws for various reasons.”
http://www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~nanatoli/
“The United States does not support the Kyoto Treaty and the Senate did not ratify it when it was brought before them to be reviewed. The Senate did approve a resolution in September 1997 by a 95-0 vote that listed the minimum requirements that would result in the Senate ratifying the treaty. ”
http://www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~nanatoli/us.htm
And four reasons are perfectly reasonable objections.
though US: “At negotiations, Annex I countries (including the US) collectively agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% on average for the period 2008-2012. This reduction is relative to their annual emissions in a base year, usually 1990.”
And it looks like US is about country that actually did anything to reach these goals [which also was expected- that US would actually follow laws and other countries would not.] Though no US policy had much affect, the reccession and free markets increasing efficeny and lately all this natural gases from fracking has been what has reduced emission.
Other refs:
Nature journal, which require you pay to see [so I don’t look]
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7373/full/479291a.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20111117
Was quoted as saying:
“The Kyoto protocol… as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, has failed,” it says. “It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/scientists-say-kyoto-protocol-is-outdated-failure-397801.html
And article also cites it:
“The authors believe that human-induced climate change is indeed real and serious. But they convincingly argue that in ten years of operation Kyoto has not achieved its goals of reducing international climate emissions (most of the countries that signed up to Kyoto have increased their greenhouse gas emissions in that period); that an intergovernmental treaty between 150 countries was the wrong kind of instrument for solving a problem that is primarily driven by a dozen nations; and that the preoccupation with emissions targets prevented much serious thought about the mechanisms by which the targets would be met, (leading to widespread manipulation in which companies have created potent greenhouse gases in order to make money from claiming Kyoto credits for destroying the gases that they made.)”
http://climateofchange.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/why-kyoto-has-failed-wicked-problems-and-the-wrong-trousers/
So I would say that US problem with Kyoto is everyone and their donkey could see this treaty would lead to massive corruption.
And everyone with any sense, knows that government corruption is main problem is this world- it’s why poor countries are poor.
Corruption from American point of view is government inhibiting the freedom of it’s citizens- and all the stuff thing flows from this, unchecked power, lack free press, government not accountable, etc.
Plus the other reason Senate voted against, any treaty thru Senate is nightmare. It generally asking them to concede power, and they don’t like doing that [nor is it popular with the voters].
JC: Blessings on you.
“..and developing technologies to expand energy access.” I do not know if you meant it in this sense, but alleviating poverty (a.k.a. lack of energy) is a major element of adapting to climate change and every other vicissitude of life.
On another subject – in the conclusion you seem to avoid the problems with developing a science consensus in the context of a political process. If you think about where UN consensus building has been most successful, it is in defining a moral consensus where the role of science is clearly subsidiary or nonexistent. One concern with the IPCC process is that the moral consensus that are appropriate to other UN initiatives appear to pollute the scientific consensus in a effort to further these other very valid moral imperatives. At this point sorting this out is hard. The IPCC seems to be embracing more gray literature rather than less which to me means they are focusing ever more on the global moral issues rather than climate science.
So the wickedness of the problem has two dimensions
– the science itself remains difficult
– for those for whom the science is settled (and others of course), the moral issues lead to a broad range of policy options driven by diverse moral agendas
Probably beyond the scope of your paper, but if we are to embrace the precautionary principle, let’s focus on poverty before CO2.
I’ll have more tomorrow after a more careful review of your most excellent paper.
Dr. Curry,
I find this sort of an odd paper for me to “review.” Not knowing the journal, my advice may or may not be useful. What I’d like to read explicitly is reference to the serial arguments, ALL of which must be true, that would justify the policies that the IPPC party line, or the forces that it feeds, lays out.
The arguments:
– as a trace greenhouse gas, more CO2 warms the planet
– the industrial revolution has spawned a man-made contribution to atmospheric CO2 (I think mostly everyone agrees with this)
– feedbacks are positive
– “our” models and/or selected data on global temperature trends are good and descriptive
– warming is dangerous, and possibly runaway
If you take away anything from this, there is no “carbon” market. Well, anyway, it’s pretty clear that 97% of scientists in relevant fields don’t accept “all of the above” as virtual fact.
“in taking decisions, drawing conclusions, and adopting reports, the IPCC Plenary and Working Groups shall use all best endeavours to reach consensus.”
This is a bit like a mathematical smoothing process on data to expose long term effects, so useful in climate studies. You can use different formulae to expose hidden information. But consensus as an aid to human decision making does have adverse consequences when applied to committees: it results in lowest common denominator decisions which once taken are difficult to reverse. It forces decisions on people before they are ready.
This is one of the reasons why I have cast doubt on the ability of the UN’s IPCC to manage the project.
I do quarrel with the use of the term ‘linear’ outside the mathematical meaning. If it only means a sequence of events somehow logically connected, then it degrades the importance ‘non-linearity’, so important to climate science.
Your paper seems to address both science and politics: “For these strategies to work, politicians need to take political responsibility and not hide endlessly behind scientific uncertainties. When working with policy makers and communicators, it is important that scientists not to fall into the trap of acceding to inappropriate demands for certainty from decision makers.” More about this quote in a moment. But I’m not clear on the charter given you for the paper — perhaps you were expected to address science only. If that wasn’t your charter, there are significant engineering and economic issues that should be mentioned. Just the issue of engineering an affordable solution to whatever problems agreed to be addressed will present political and economic problems as well as engineering problems. The way forward should discuss how consensus is to be developed if climate isn’t to be just an academic study.
Now, your quote above indicates a degree of academic naivety. When have you found politicians taking political responsibility on matters of controversy and controversy is certain on climate issues absent a miracle of scientific progress. As for scientists not falling into the trap etc., you can’t really believe that politicians will disrupt the world’s economy to take measures to avoid a risk that isn’t certain. If they did, they would be swept away by popular discontent.
So, I have to wonder what is the intent for this paper and suggest that it might be best to focus on building scientific progress in ways that consensus about the science emerges.
Judith,
I like the quote you’ve selected for the start of this section: ““Science is belief in the ignorance of experts” – Richard Feynman”
I’ll focus on the last section “The way forward”
My initial impression is your draft of this section is too focused on science to the exclusion of economics and policy. Given the target “ The journal is a review journal, outside the field of climate science. I’d suggest the balance should be moved from science towards economics and policy.
My suggestions are as follows:
1. Science needs to focus on providing the specific pieces of information that are required for economic analysis and policy decisions. I’d suggest Nordhaus’s work provides an example of how the economic analysis can show what parameters are most important to decision making and, therefore, where research should be focused. For example, Nordhaus (2008) “A Question of Balance”, Table 7-2, p130, http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf shows that the uncertainty in the ‘damage function’ causes the greatest uncertainty in the cost-benefit analyses and, therefore, the greatest uncertainty in determining the optimum policy.
2. To move forward effectively we’d need to remove or avoid the issues that divide progressives from conservatives.
I believe that can be done if we focus on economically rational policies. Such policies will give the progressives what they say they want – reduced CO2 emissions – and satisfy conservatives – reduce emissions without damaging the economy and without impairing our ability to handle other risks and other needs (like lifting people out of poverty).
It is possible to have policies that achieve the stated core requirements of both sides of the argument. I’ll explain how I suggest these can be achieved in following posts.
Fortunately, AGW advocates have made their predictions in black and white => http://bit.ly/xColbo
There is no global warming. The observation is UNDER the case assuming CO2 concentration kept at the 2000 level. CO2 Concentration has been business as usual.
What a joke. Do they think the world is dumb to interpret a simple graph?
Let them continue with their obfuscation.
What a big joke.
Girma | July 14, 2012 at 1:40 am |
Looks like the black and white predictions were in blue, green, orange and magenta. Typical of Mr. Orssengo to leave out most of the story.
The observed trend at 0.17C/decade since is well within the TAR range. Taking the most recent 17 years, the observed trend is 0.12C/decade — an outlier from the ensemble of models, but anyone who understands Bayes understands that this sort of variation is inevitable. It would be remarkable if there weren’t periods with trends below the overall projection, in particular as so many low and negative trends on the actual models are seen.
But then, we’ve had this discussion before, and still the obsessiver recitation of false claims from you continue.
Bart
There has not been any GMST trend in the last 15 years =>
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997
Not really.
A story told solely with HadCrut3 is disingenuous. When Kyle Swanson discusses warming interrupted, a proposed climate shift, he is honest. He says the shift is less noticeable on GisTemp. That’s an honest presentation.
Since then they’ve come out with HadCrut4. The end point is different, but it upward trend is unlikely to change if/when they add additional data.
So your lack of trend exists on two series, and the “global” in one of them has been called into question.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:59/mean:61/from:1962.25/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1962.25/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:180/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1962.25/to:1977.25/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/derivative/from:1962.5/scale:0.0000001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/derivative/mean:59/mean:61/from:1963/scale:100/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1977/to:2007/trend
Mr. Orssengo, you’re simply ignoring half the story where it’s inconvenient for you. This hostility toward inconvenient truth is very unscientific, and suspect. It leads one to be skeptical of everything you say.
Looking at your much-vaunted 60-year trend line, from your own theory of a 60-year mystery cycle with no mechanism, we find that the trend is 0.14C/decade for six decades — a number very much in line with the bottom of the IPCC projection, by the way.
Looking at both the first and the last 15 years of that 60 year period (fully half of the period), we see similar spans of falling trend. Indeed, looking at the derivative of the GMT, we can see the accumulated trend over 5 years falls below zero in the past 60 years several times, even during the 30 year period with the sharp 0.18C/decade rise. And while to the errant human eye this down-up-down fishtail calls to mind a cyclic pattern, there is no evidence of anything but variability in how fast the 20-year rise is.. which better matches the 20-year patterns of the ensemble of climate models than any explanation that leaves out AGW.
So falling trends in the GMT don’t work as a disproof. What would be a disproof would be a stronger proof of another mechanism than the AGW hypothesis along with an explanation of why the GHE isn’t as strong as Physics tells us from some fairly elementary calculations.
Which you just haven’t done.
R, Bart
The cause of the PDO is not known. Perhaps it too is a “mystery cycle with no mechanism” which also ought to draw ridicule…
More to the point. Even your strongest detractors must give you points for your math skills. Don’t erase that by larding on the illogical invective.
blueice2hotsea | July 15, 2012 at 2:42 am |
The cause of the PDO is not known. Perhaps it too is a “mystery cycle with no mechanism” which also ought to draw ridicule…
You mean it doesn’t draw ridicule?
These aren’t value judgements, or personal. The ideas are being tested and failing, not the personalities.
PDO may be a meaningless label, just like the conventions historians use to label their ‘movements of history’, which often when dismantled to their parts fall apart and disappear as conjectural, specious, ill-assorted and illusory. Perhaps the PDO is just the clustering tendency of blockers and flows that self-propagate through positive feedback more often than not. Or just an accident of observation with no objective reality.
The difference is, PDO is useful for discussing what’s actually happening. The “60-year GMT Cycle” isn’t useful at all: it’s not exact enough to allow identification of which phase we expect to be in; it’s been observed for less than three full cycles.. indeed, it’s been observed not to exist at all in the earliest records, and to be degenerate and variable otherwise, so much so as to lead to the conclusion it is a hallucination, and no more.
So we have real things, real ideas, being hammered away at by someone who ought know better with fictions. It’s a circumstance that is due invective.
Bart R
Thanks for the elaboration. You make very good points, except I am not sold on the ridicule part.
Suppose Girma has charted a 60 yr pseudo-cycle which has been temporarily driven by transient flutter aka the PDO. Further suppose that the flutter forcing is due to an increase in non-periodic turbulence caused by increasing GHGs.
How does that impact Girma’s claim that the most reasonable expectation is a continuation of the 60 yr [pseudo] cycle for at least one-half cycle (or so)?
I predict you won’t win Girma over with ridicule. However, if Girma is as I suspect (reasonable and intelligent) you can win him over with a reasonable and intelligent argument as to why the most likely expectation is abrupt, immediate termination of the 60 yr pseudo-cycle.
blueice2hotsea | July 15, 2012 at 1:19 pm |
.. except I am not sold on the ridicule part.
I can’t disagree with your stance; the ridicule is in part because it’s so very difficult to discuss patent absurdities without some tone of ridicule appearing. What metaphors or comparisons can be made to what Mr. Orssengo (and others) have done that won’t come across as clownish or obscene? What measured and temperate response that simply lists the pertinent and obvious errors that won’t come across as heavy-handed piling on or lampoon, when there are so many contained in Mr. Orssengo’s posts? I’d like to not ridicule comments by others. I’ve made efforts to purge overly negative tone. But the subject of Mr. Orssengo’s cyclic claim itself is ridiculous; discussing it doesn’t make it less so regardless of how one goes about it.
How does that impact Girma’s claim that the most reasonable expectation is a continuation of the 60 yr [pseudo] cycle for at least one-half cycle (or so)?
I’ll repeat a metaphor I used earlier to explain my position on Mr. Orssengo’s predictive power. Suppose Mr. Orssengo’s car had a breakdown, and he took it to a medical doctor and insisted the car be put through the hospital’s MRI machine for diagnosis. The doctor would insist that an MRI has no diagnostic power over cars would produce only random noise, and such a large block of metal would only break the MRI, which wasn’t intended and can’t be built for such uses. Mr. Orssengo’s apparent reply is, “Doc, I don’t care if it doesn’t work in theory and has never worked before in reality, this time the random noise might by pure chance be right!”
See, that’s the essence of my objection. We know trendology of this sort has no predictive power absent a mechanism backing it. We know this particular trend is no more than about a century long, degenerate and vague. It’s a pure waste of time, no more likely to be right than random chance. And Mr. Orssengo has shifted his ‘trend’ several times over the past few years (you can trace this by Googling him, he’s posted his ideas tens of thousands of times in such a short time), so we know he hindcasts quite a bit to hide his ideas’ deficiencies, too.
I predict you won’t win Girma over with ridicule. However, if Girma is as I suspect (reasonable and intelligent) you can win him over with a reasonable and intelligent argument as to why the most likely expectation is abrupt, immediate termination of the 60 yr pseudo-cycle.
Tried reason and intelligence. He’s been flagrant in making statements that sometimes agree with criticisms of his methods and then immediately posting the same errors, or backsliding. His posts, his remarks, taken as a whole show awareness of being wrong, but they just don’t stop. The views appear hardened and immune to suasion of any sort.
I’m more like throwing up road flares to alert people to the hazard caused by a careless and dangerous post.
Bart R
I too am uncomfortable with chartism and curious coincidences. Keep the Girma’s graph in mind while reading the 2006 Hansen et al policy paper (cum climate science) Global Temperature Change. The paper was a driver for alot of discussion by news providers, science mags and blogs wrt increased global temperatures over the prior 30 years (1976-2005). Notice that the period of interest is exactly one-half of the periodicity of the objectionable 60 yr PseuDO-cycle, and it is the positive half.
It would have been better had the 30 year period of interest turned out to be the negative half of the 60 yr cycle. Then Hansen and others could be urging people not to go overboard with panic, because fear of a speculated impending shift to a positive phase of a pseudo-cycle is irrational and unscientific. But alas, not so.
Even better would have been a random phase shift and absence of an integer harmonic between the pseudo-cycle and the “prior 30 yrs”. But alas, the worst possible combination turns up.
Because of the curious coincidence of being highly correlated with the PseuDO-cycle (and Girma’s chart) Hansen’s paper also smells of chartism. Remember, the PseuDO-cycle was established nearly a decade prior to the 2006 paper.
blueice2hotsea | July 16, 2012 at 2:05 pm |
Give your head a shake. You’ve been hypnotized by the illusion of a curve.
Remove the period (1976-2005) from your consideration. Go back to 1975. Graph the information that was had up to that time. Well, you can’t really, the data was too sparse and disordered at that time, so substitute the nearest proxy readily available (HadCRUT3 will do, in a pinch).
Least squares trend line; slope = 0.00257383 per year!
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:101/mean:103/to:1975/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to:1975/trend
That’s your 60-year pseudocycle. Based on the data available at that time, no one but a loon would have ascribed exactly 60 years. No one, certainly, would have predicted a trend like the past half century, on pure trendology.
Don’t be fooled by present shapes of smoothed lines into thinking there’s something there that wasn’t there fifty years ago. It just wasn’t there.
Judith, no substantive comments for now, a few typos etc.
Intro: (Idso and Singer, 2009, 2011), that relatives or contradicts the main conclusions of the IPCC – I don’t undertsand the use of “relatives”
Role of consensus in decision making: The influence of science on policy is assumed to be deterministic: if the scientific facts are ‘sound,’ or then they have a direct impact on policy – delete “or”
Obersteiner et al. (2001) describe the uncertainty surrounding the climate change science is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways: – “as” rather than “is”
Unintended consequences … but an increasingly broad community of technical educated people – “technically”
In general, I’m pro-hyphens in compound words: “decision-making” rather than “decision making”
Curry (2011) argues for a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify better ways of framing the climate change problem – either “argues that a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify” or “for a concerted effort by the IPCC to identify”
I’ve forwarded the draft to Des Moore, whose contacts might be able to contribute on “ways forward.”
Faustino | July 14, 2012 at 1:50 am |
I think the use of “relatives” here indicates that most members of the NIPCC are related to each other?
Faustino, thanks for these comments
Another typo issue: The link to the AMS climate change statement is http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html not
http://www.ametsoc.org/POLICY/climatechangeresearch_2003.htm
Please make sure that is the one you want because the link in the paper is broken
thx
The IPCC is part of an out-and-out political body, and the “manufactured consensus of the IPCC” is but a predictable consequence of its underlying political motivation. As we see, everything it does only ever serves to justify political action, and this will never change – it is also highly resistant to reform. It just isn’t possible to depoliticize a political body.
Since this of course all lethal to the pursuit of knowledge, the way forward is to summarily scrap the IPCC, or at least completely ignore it. In its place we need a body founded in principles of science, not of advocacy for politics.
“Consensus” – Wiki definition of:
From the Greek “con” meaning confuse, bluff, confound. “sensus, from the Latin ” census” meaning statistics record, inventory.
Consensus in climate science meaning ‘a confounding statistics record or invent..ory, sort of like a hockey stick illusion.
Your etymology seems a tad wayward there, Beth–or was your tongue firmly in your cheek?
Origin:
1850–55; < Latin, equivalent to consent ( īre ) to be in agreement, harmony ( con- con- + sentīre to feel; compare sense) + -tus suffix of v. action
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consensus
I suggest an additional reference that ought be cited. It’s a bit dated, dusty even, but it’s where the original definition of consensus in Science draws its breath:
Newton, I. (1713) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2nd ed. London, UK S. Pepys
This work contains the root of the principle of scientific consensus (loosely translated):
1. Admit no more causes of natural things than are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances,
2. To the same natural effect, assign the same causes,
3. Qualities of bodies, which are found to belong to all bodies within experiments, are to be esteemed universal, and
4. Propositions collected from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate or very nearly true until contradicted by other phenomena.
This is what is meant when scientific consensus is said. Everything else, the clucking of hens around tables and handshakes and back-patting, is irrelevant. The consensus is in the observations and inferences of causes sufficient to explain them, by parsimony, simplicity, universality and truth; consensus is not something cooked up, spun, or agreed among opinion-makers. Anyone whose ever participated in spinning, opinion or cooking wasn’t doing science at the time.
Where the IPCC shows observations and presents reasoning to support causes that explain the observations according to Newton’s four philosophical underpinnings of science, that’s a consensus and the test is do I find observations and reasoning that meet Newton’s test.
Where anyone does any different, IPCC or otherwise, it’s just so much hokum.
As an observation, most of what I find in IPCC reports corresponds with Principia, regardless of third-hand reports of interpretations of opinions of commentators.
The work of ploughing through new observations, new explanations, new claims, and old, of examining possible causes, is difficult enough when we hold ourselves to parsimony, simplicity, universality and truth. Throwing in ‘socially acceptable’ or ‘acceptable to the blogosphere’ is a level of impossible perfection that is also superfluous to the needs of science. As policy, sure, those concerns matter. For activists who prefer decisions made on science over faith or ignorance or baloney or the lies of the narrowly self-interested, consensus adds those dimensions of palatability Newton never needed to worry about.
I’d say the fault is in our audiences and ourselves, not Newton. Stick to the Principia while doing science; disclose the personal or activist interest up front; distinguish Scientific Consensus containing only observations and explanation of causes by parsimony, simplicity, universality and truth from “public consensus”, and let the audience figure it out.
That’s the way forward I propose, though I know it’s not the easy way. The easy way is to assume the audience are idiots waiting to be spoonfed and needing to be manipulated. I’d rather be amply insulted by someone delivering science than flattered by someone lying about data and methods.. Which apparently a lot of people hope for, because the major manipulations are accusations that data and methods have been manipulated.
The way forward for that is to open data and methods from cradle to grave on the cloud fully to the public eye.
The endless IPCC cluck-clucking about there being a consensus, is prima facie evidence that there isn’t one. Real consensus emerges on its own, it doesn’t need high-flying political advocacy.
Bart, you say “it’s where the original definition of consensus in Science draws its breath [Newton’s Principia]. This work contains the root of the principle of scientific consensus”.
Who says? Does Newton say? Is there in the Principia reference to “the principle of scientific consensus”?
And you go on to say “most of what I find in IPCC reports corresponds with Principia”. Were Newton alive today he might perhaps embrace a rather different opinion.
Judith above, quoting Lehrer (1975) “consensus among a reference group of experts thus concerned is relevant only if agreement is not sought”. Does this remind you of the IPCC? Or not?
simon abingdon | July 14, 2012 at 5:35 am |
What, is it my job to chop up Principia like pablum and spoonfeed it to people who don’t bother to read the foundation books themselves before forming hardened opinions unassailable by fact or reason? That’s too much of a demand. Read it yourself.
Find a scientist whose position lacks parsimony, simplicity, universality and truth as defined in rules one through four as developed by Newton from first principles; you will find one not only outside the scientific consensus, but also one who is demonstrated wrong eventually. This is how we spot Scafetta for a hoaxer, and know G&T are blowing smoke; this is why Lindzen’s needlessly complex cloud-iris-self-balancing and Lovelocks similar Gaia nonsense are easy to spot as wrong, and were not acceptable to scientific consensus.
You might get a consensus of a lot of people who also from time to time practice science that isn’t scientific. They may even confuse it by the magickal reasoning of confirmation bias with scientific opinion. But if it fails on the foundations of science, it’s just geek consensus, and no more authoritative than geek opinion of which pin-up poster is sexier: Einstein’s or Hawking’s.
And when you cut out all the unscientific consensus, and look only to evidence and methods, the IPCC reports perform a useful service in collecting, collating and summarizing wide swaths from climate topics in an orderly and organized way that more often than not — although clearly sometimes not — presents parsimony, simplicity, universality and truth.
Sorry Bart, since you see fit to compare the magisterial grandeur of the Principia with the activist propaganda of the IPCC (““most of what I find in IPCC reports corresponds with Principia”) it’s hard to believe you really expect to be taken seriously.
simon abingdon | July 14, 2012 at 3:09 pm |
So you never read either, and you got nothing? Tch.
How about introducing some market type reforms into the IPCC? The IPCC could ask scientists, say, to tender to provide a justification of the climate sensitivity to expect from a doubling of CO2 levels this century.
The tender wouldn’t necessarily go to the lowest priced bidder, but the lowest price acceptable bid. This would make it clear that any suggestion that 2 x C02 sensitivity was likely to be any higher than 1 degC would not be looked upon at all favourably.
That should get you a better answer, or one you’d like better, don’t you think?
The problem, tt, is the IPCC is highly unlikely to do anything that might compromise its mission, ie establishing the ‘C’ in CAGW.
There seems to be a misperception among some commentators, and maybe even started by the impression Judith herself gives on the topic, that consensus is the same thing as unanimity
It isn’t. See for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making
You make this stuff up. Why?
I can answer that question. Tempterrain is associated with Sketptical Science. Skeptical Science is owned/managed by a specialist in communications. He is not a scientist but he believes in CAGW. So he is an expert in spinning the message to convert those who read the web site to accept his view of what the science is saying. He and co workers like tempterrain are specialists at selecting the papers that can be interpreted and spun to support their views then spinning the message using their training and skills as communicators and spin merchants.
That’s why tempterrain makes stuff up. That’s how they work. Just take a look at a sample of the titles on the blog posts on Skeptical Science and the spin and exaggeration is obvious.
Peter Lang,
Thank you for the positive comments about http://www.skepticalscience.com It’s well worth a look for anyone who’s had enough of the usual anti-science nonsense that often is passed off as intelligent comment on many right wing blogs, and increasingly on Climate etc too, sadly.
“Makes stuff up”? But, why would I have to, even if I wanted to? There’s really no need.
PS My only gripe would be that it’s ‘skeptical’ rather than ‘sceptical’ !
PPS I’ll use you comment as justification on my next expense claim , if that’s OK with you!
You have expense claims? You must be part of a Well Organised ‘Green Energy’ Alarmist Shill Propaganda Campaign.
Oh wait – you work for Skeptical Science. Nuff said. My case rests.
Latimer,
You shouldn’t believe everything (or anything?) that Peter Lang tells you. I have no connection to skeptical science. But don’t tell him though, I’m just winding him up on the expense claims!
Sceptical is the British and Australian spelling. Skeptical is the American spelling.
Your comment about “right wing blogs” shows your bias. You don’t acknowledge that yours is a left wing blog, promoting you anti-science – i.e. left wing propaganda and spin.
Peter Land, You say “Your comment about “right wing blogs” shows your bias”
But does it? My own politics, to put my cards on the table, would be left-of-centre social/liberal democracy in Australian terms. But I’d always put scientific findings first and foremost before any political considerations.
My criticism of the ultra -right on the AGW issue and the ultra-left on the nuclear issue is exactly the same, in that they don’t do that. Their stance is decided first and then scientific facts, and evidence, are cherry picked afterwards to support their original, and politically motivated, conclusion.
That sort of strikes me as being the wrong way around.
@tempterrain
‘Their stance is decided first and then scientific facts, and evidence, are cherry picked afterwards to support their original, and politically motivated, conclusion’
And how would you respond if I suggested that the sentence above – modified to read
‘
‘Their stance is decided first and then scientific facts, and evidence, are cherry picked afterwards to support their original, and salary, career and status motivated, conclusion’
could equally apply to ‘climate scientists’?
Sauce, mon brave, is for the goose and the gander.
You say you have not connection to SkepticalScience, yet on previous threads you claimed you write articles for them. What is the truth? Can we believe anything you say?
“[I] claimed to write articles for Skepticalscience” ? Where?
I think you must be confusing me with someone else.
In fact I think you sound so confused about everything , including climate science, that you should really pack it all in and, do what people your age normally do in their retirement, like playing bowls or walking the dog.
Tempterrain,
I don’t recall where you made the statement about writing for SkepticalScience. It was in the past week or so. However, I am not going to go looking for it. So I’ll now accept that you do not and that I may have misinterpreted what you said. However, I do believe it was you who made the comment, not someone else. I do not recall any other blogger here who has been frequently praising SkepticalScience as the “go to” site for the “truth” on climate science.
As for age. I like Regan’s statement (slightly modified for your benefit): if you agree not to talk about my age I won’t point out your gullibility.
Peter,
Here you have at least one person who tells about his contribution at SkS
http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-215682
Peter Lang,
Well , of course, you are “not going to go looking for it.” You know it’s not there, that’s why.
Look, I wouldn’t have any problem helping out with John Cook’s website: skepticalscience, but even though John and I live close by, we don’t know each other and we’ve never met.
Pekka Pirila,
Thank you for pointing to that post and for providing the link. That was the comment I was thinking of and I had incorrectly attributed to
Tempterrain,
My apologies. I accused you incorrectly. I made a mistake.
But, I am sure it is the only one I’ve ever made in my life :)
Peter,
OK Fair enough. Apology accepted.
But I wouldn’t regard your suggestion of writing articles for skepticalscience as an accusation as such. Its just that I’ve never been asked ;-(
Peter L to Peter M: ‘Can we believe anything you say?’
Peter M to Peter L: ‘You know it’s not there and that’s why’.
We can believe some things Peter M says and Peter L didn’t know it wasn’t there. But Pekka did. There’s a lesson in there somewhere but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.
==============
Simon,
Anyone who knows scientists will appreciate a certain independence of mind. Unanimity, which is everyone saying exactly the same thing, is obviously unrealistic, contrived and I would say unscientific.
So it’s quite an underhand tactic to use an incorrect quote like “Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively……” , when that’s unanimity, to try to define consensus and unanimity as effectively the same thing, and then attack the concept of consensus as if it were indeed synonymous with unanimity.
If Judith were being honest she would have addressed the difference between the two in her posting. She has asked for comments, so there is still time for her to do that in her submitted paper.
“Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually” – Abba Eban
Tempterrain, you spin that ironic comment into “There seems to be a misperception among some commentators, and maybe even started by the impression Judith herself gives on the topic, that consensus is the same thing as unanimity”.
So tempterrain, which commentators are you referring to who think consensus is the same thing as unanimity? Please name them.
And while you’re at it please explain why Judith herself might be to blame for this “misperception”.
Otherwise we’ll know for sure whether or not you’re a person of good character.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/02/on-the-dangerous-naivete-of-uncritical-acceptance-of-scientific-consensus/
Simon,
I have already explained why Judith is responsible for an incorrect understanding of just what a consensus is.
The link provided by “neverendingaudit” also starts off with a quote, chosen by Judith, “When unanimity of opinion is forged among the most learned men across various bodies of knowledge….” which again seeks to establish a synonymous meaning between the terms consensus and unanimity.
Consensus, in the scientific context, isn’t “unanimity of opinion”. Rather it is is a broad agreement of the general veracity of a theory but it wouldn’t be an exact agreement on every detail. There wouldn’t be a universal uncritical acceptance of everything and anything by workers in the field, for instance.
Of course, it’s possible, or even likely, that Judith might explain the two terms quite differently. It’s also possible that she thinks unanimity and consensus are the same. I doubt it. But by avoiding any explanation at all, she knows she is creating the impression that they are.
So you and Judith do not share a consensus about the semantics of the word ‘consensus’.
Seems to me that this is a fine example of how weak a term it is and that needing to use a supposed ‘scientific consensus’ as an argument about anything is a sign that there is no better evidence.
And since all those who share the supposed consensus are direct beneficiaries (salary, career, status) of the global warming gravy train
the famous reply
‘They would say that wouldn’t they’
springs unbidden to my lips.
More condescending nonsense from a Left wing CAGW advocate and practitioner of “communications” – which means cherry picking of papers then misrepresentation and spin for “The Cause”.
I point to the first part of that sentence:
> More condescending nonsense […]
and I point to what comes next:
> [F]rom a Left wing CAGW advocate […]
That is all
Are you suggesting that only the Left and CAGW true believers are entitled to be condescending, and I should not respond in kind, so that, hopefully, the message might get through to them?
I’m suggesting that your
Bad hominem’s a bad omen:
It labels a squadron of
Strawmen eating red herrings
On board of a black helicopter
On its way to your house,
Figuratively speaking.
Thank you for your rhetorical question,
w
tempterrain, on July 14, 2012 at 5:11 am you said “There seems to be a misperception among some commentators … that consensus is the same thing as unanimity”. If your reference to “some commentators” is to have any relevance it must refer to comments posted upthread before 5:11 am, rather than random references from other sources plucked off the top of your head and which readers would have no reason to understand.
Later the same day at 9:39 am you tried to justify yourself by offering the misleadingly incomplete quote “Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively …” which was made by one Abba Eban, long since dead.
At 10:59 the same day I asked “which commentators are you referring to who think consensus is the same thing as unanimity” and asked you to name them. You have not yet done so.
So, tempterrain, confining yourself to posts on this thread made before 5:11 am on July 14, 2012, please name the commentators who suggested that “consensus is the same thing as unanimity” so that we may judge whether you are a person of good character, or someone who makes stuff up in order to mislead.
Simon,
If you want examples just do a Ctrl-F on the phrase “manufactured consensus”. This was first used in Judith’s post and picked up , as you’ll see by several commentators.
A consensus is, as suggested by Ron C is a “shared understanding” . You can’t manufacture that. You can manufacture a unanimity though, just by strictly enforcing what people are allowed to say.
Therefore anyone using the term ‘manufactured consensus’, approvingly, is guilty of precisely what I said to start with.
“You can manufacture a unanimity”. You illiterate philistine. Every educated person knows that “unanimity” is a mass noun. Go read up on some grammar. Write a hundred times “A mass noun is not used with the indefinite article”.
Simon,
If we’re being picky, should “philistine” have a capital P? But, in any case the rule you mention isn’t rigid. If you google phrases like “A unanimity of opinion” (Don’t forget the “”) you’ll see plenty of usages, some in academic papers written very “educated persons”.
http://xkcd.com/1081/
When two sides are both arguing from authority or consensus, the only real victory is when one of them gives up and goes off to have more fun doing something else.
Anyone here have anything more fun to do?
Judith,
The concept of consensus enters the IPCC work at two levels, on the level of scientific consensus and on the level of reporting on the state of science.
As your reference to Lehrer describes correctly a scientific consensus is meaningful only when it has formed autonomously and has not been a goal of any activity. Thus IPCC should not in any way force the scientists to a consensus.
The other level of consensus concerns the process of writing a report. It is right to search for a formulation on which there’s a consensus among the authors. That consensus should not claim that there’s more consensus among the scientists than there is based on the autonomous process that has or has not led to a consensus on each particular issue.
To me it’s clear that the codification “in taking decisions, drawing conclusions, and adopting reports, the IPCC Plenary and Working Groups shall use all best endeavours to reach consensus.” is written to apply to the writing process and is therefore fully acceptable as long as it does not get misinterpreted to mean declaring more scientific consensus than there really is.
The problem is that the right consensus of the second type may lead to a process of forcing scientific consensus also when that does not exist naturally. There’s also certainly willingness to read the IPCC as reporting consensus even on issues on which it contains explicit statements that tell about the lack of consensus.
Read with a critical mind the WG1 reports contain at least qualitatively most of the statements on the lack of scientific consensus that should be there. In several cases they are written in a way that may downplay their significance. That may be a result of searching consensus on the formulation of the text: The caveats are listed there to satisfy more critical authors but they are worded in a way to get those to agree who want to “send a clear message”.
Pekka: Thus IPCC should not in any way force the scientists to a consensus.
That’s all it ever has done, and all it ever will do. A UN body can hardly be expected to conclude that no political action is needed. That’s why they have lead authors reviewing their own work etc etc etc.
” IPCC should not in any way force the scientists to a consensus”
That’s the point about a consensus, which is a collective understanding, – it can’t be. Of course, it could still be wrong if there is some fundamental flaw in everyone’s line of thought, but that, again, can only be changed by removing the flaw. It can’t be forced.
Does not agree with rule 10 of the IPCC and what their definition of consensus meant.
The petition was a political statement against Kyoto and/or against a belief in “CAGW”, surely. I understand the petition request included some dubious science describing the benefits of CO2. So to cite this as evidence against the “consensus” is a bit dangerous.
Certainly linking it with the NIPCC report is inaccurate as there is no evidence that any of the signees reviewed the contents of the report (given the report was published in 2009 whereas the petition project was active in 1997 and 2007) and many were probably not qualified to comment (a bit like me).
Kyoto was a politically motivated statement dressed up as science. The petition was in response to this deception.
Exactly. Someone could sign the petition while also agreeing that the IPCC report was a good summary of the science.
Hardly. If the IPCC report (also underpinning Kyoto) wasn’t dressed up as science, what would there be to object to ?
AGW is used as a justification for many policies, usually with a lot of added hyperbole (eg “catastrophic heating” in the petition). My objection to the policy doesn’t mean I don’t think climate scientists’ conclusions aren’t reasonable, and aren’t reasonably summarised in the IPCC report.
Nice analysis. A couple of extra thoughts that may fit in somewhere:
Consensus is a political concept, the absence of overt opposition. A policy which commands consensus is politically easy to implement, and politicians spend a lot of effort seeking consensus (Margaret Thatcher and your Republican tribalists apparently excepted). So the political masters must have found the IPCC focus on scientific consensus both quite natural and potentially very helpful in reducing one source of opposition to whatever policies would have to be implemented.
But there is simply no basis for supposing that consensus is relevant for arriving at the truth of how the world is. You outline a selection of biases that can occur in consensus decision-making. Haack (1996) points out the need for “a distinction between questions of warrant — how good is the evidence for the theory? — and questions of acceptance — what is the standing of the theory in the relevant scientific community?” [Susan Haack, “Towards a Sober Sociology of Science”, in The Flight from science and reason, eds. P R Gross, N Levitt and M W Lewis, NY Academy of Sciences, p. 259.] Questions of acceptance bring us to the sociology of science, and you cite Kuhn and Feyerabend; but even if they correctly describe what scientists do, that does not provide a warrant for the scientific ideas. If careful observation showed that every scientist drinks beer, that would not show that beer-drinking can establish the truth about the world. The only defensible way of arriving at theories that are warranted still seems to be some version of Popper’s – state the theory clearly, derive its testable consequences, and then try assiduously to prove them wrong. (That, not coincidentally, is a mental discipline that helps to avoid the biases that Kelly (2005) talks about.) An important refinement is that one theory is in practice always tested against another, at least implicitly – that also is a discipline that reduces the confirmation bias. When our theory fails, as it always does, that shows us that our understanding is imperfect and may provide a starting point for refinement.
So the politicians’ comfort with a consensus-building process has intruded where it has no business. The politicians are not going to instruct the IPCC to stop seeking consensus, because that is what politicians do themselves and is exactly what they want from the scientists. But it is not going to happen on the sort of timetable the politicians would like, and you point out some of the baleful effects that it has had meanwhile.
The politicians have a bigger problem, though. Regardless of the scientific evidence, the sort of carbon-control policies that some scientists would like to see implemented are not going to happen for the compelling reason that the politicians know they will be voted straight out of office. (Roger Pielke Jr’s Iron Law.) Hoping that politicians will “take political responsibility” is misplaced – I know of only one politician who said that there are no limits to what can be achieved if you don’t care about re-election, and acted as though she meant it (she is no longer in politics). What we get are fake promises that changes will be made a decade or more in the future, when the politicians making the promises expect to have retired. When the due dates for these promises roll around, their successors repudiate them or water them down till they are inoffensive and ineffective. (In the Kyoto Protocol, we also got shameless gerrymandering, as when the measurements got backdated so that Germany could claim credit for the collapse of East German heavy industry, which had already happened.)
The politicians may have hoped that a scientific consensus would provide cover to build a political consensus, and I suspect that many scientists became activists with the same hope. But a scientific consensus will not happen, and should not happen if the science is to progress effectively, and in any case would not be compelling enough to create a political consensus in the foreseeable future. Your ending is exactly right: there is a need for a range of policies that do not depend on precise scientific knowledge and that are desirable for other reasons than climate change. I would add one more sentence, but you may think it goes beyond your brief: the scientists need to shut up and sit down, because they have negligible policy expertise (as several of them have willingly demonstrated on Climate etc). Realistic policy ideas will come from economists, geographers, agronomists, engineers, and the like.
Paul, nice analysis.
Judith, You used Richard Feynman “Science is belief in the ignorance of experts” .
Maybe you could find space for Thomas Henry Huxley “Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.”
I object to the strong claim that politicians are hiding behind the uncertainties. Quite the contrary, there has been a growing realization that the uncertainties are fundamental, such that major action is not justified.
Taking issues on which a clear scientific consensus does exist only very weak conclusions can be drawn. I would include in the well established scientific consensus the following:
– Use of fossil fuels and changes in land usage have lead to increase of CO2 concentration measured at Mauna Loa (with insignificant uncertainty related to possible changes in natural sources or sinks other than reaction to the changes in concentration)
– Doubling of the CO2 concentration causes a forcing of approximately 3.7 W/m^2 which corresponds to a change of about 1.0 C in the effective radiative temperature of the Earth.
– Various feedbacks and other mechanism make the actual warming of the Earth surface different from the change in the radiative temperature. It’s highly likely that the warming of the surface is stronger than the change in the radiative temperature that corresponds to the forcing.
– The warming has detrimental consequences like a rise in sea level. It has also positive effects.
All the above is certainly accepted by almost all scientists who have put some effort in understanding the Earth system including the more skeptical ones among the climate scientists. (A few may disagree on the likelihood of my statement on the warming of the surface, but even that is presented so weakly that almost all are expected to agree.)
Going beyond those statements the level of consensus gets the weaker the more is claimed.
Why should anyone propose that strong acts should be taken when the consensus goes only so far? The reason is in the upper end of the uncertainty range for the strength of the warming and for the consequences of that. All serious requests for action are based on uncertain knowledge that’s not supported by an unquestionable consensus. The rational arguments for action must combine
– a consideration of a wide range of possible outcomes
– some feeling of the likelihoods of each of those outcomes
– concrete proposals for action (not just general goals)
– evidence on the value of the proposed actions in mitigating the problems
– evidence that the net expected value of the proposed actions is positive (not necessarily in monetary terms but in some well defined way)
In the above “evidence” can be much less than a proof but it must be real.
The above set of requirements does not allow for the linear approach. Estimating the consequences of the actions may require further knowledge from the climate science. The required knowledge cannot be transferrer from the scientists to the decision makers by a few numbers or other simple information. Using the uncertain scientific knowledge on the possible ways to act and other contributing factors requires interaction and understanding on a higher level. How that can be provided to and used by the decision making process is the problem to be solved.
Pekka, you write “- Doubling of the CO2 concentration causes a forcing of approximately 3.7 W/m^2 which corresponds to a change of about 1.0 C in the effective radiative temperature of the Earth.
– Various feedbacks and other mechanism make the actual warming of the Earth surface different from the change in the radiative temperature. It’s highly likely that the warming of the surface is stronger than the change in the radiative temperature that corresponds to the forcing.”
This is where you and I will always disagree. There is not one jot of hard measured data to support any of these claims. Yet people like yourself seem to believe that if you say them often enough, the rest of us will come to believe there is empirical data to support them. The fact of the matter is, there is no empirical data to support them. And as long as there is no empirical data to support them, then there is a significant probability that they are just plain wrong.
As I have noted over and over again, such little empirical data as we have, the complete lack of any CO2 signal in the temperature/time graph of data from the 20th and 21st centuries, gives a strong indication that, in fact, the total climate sensitivity of CO2 is indistinguishabke from zero.
Previously I quoted Thomas Henry Huxley “Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.”
Jim,
To be precise I made a claim on the views of climate scientists and other scientists who have made an effort to understand climate. Whether my claims are true or not one should check what these people are saying and writing.
I don’t think you are part of the group that i refer to.
Pekka, you write “To be precise I made a claim on the views of climate scientists and other scientists who have made an effort to understand climate.”
Precisely. Nullius in verba. You make the claim on the basis of other people’s opinions; not on the facts. And that is my complaint . I will always disagree with you if you base your claims on opinions not facts; facts i.e. hard measured independently replicated data.
Jim,
By definition I made an assessment about peoples views, not about the facts behind the views. I stated that I believe in the existence of a consensus and consensus is nothing else than coherence of views which may be called opinions as well.
It’s another matter that what I listed agrees also on my own thinking, but there’s a lot more that also agrees with my thinking but is not necessarily a consensus view.
Pekka, you write “By definition I made an assessment about peoples views, not about the facts behind the views.”
I will have to think about this one. It seems at first blush, that this is completely anti-science. It is contrary to everything I was taught in Physics 101 in Cavendish Labs Cambridge. What you seem to be saying is that the facts dont matter. As long as there is a consensus between a group of learned and eminent scientists, that is the truth and that is all that matters. Are you really saying that, or am I reading too much in to your words?
Because if that is really what you are saying, there is no scientific basis for ANYTHING you have written.
Of course the facts matter.
If the claim is about peoples views the facts are on peoples views. In principle everyone may have the same view, which will later on turn out to be wrong, but it’s much more common that a view shared by almost all scientist is correct, when there are also many scientists who have the view.
Pekka, you write “In principle everyone may have the same view, which will later on turn out to be wrong, but it’s much more common that a view shared by almost all scientist is correct, when there are also many scientists who have the view.”
I am a student of the history of physics. My reading of what has happen to physics since the time of Galileo and Newton, is precisely the OPPOSITE of yours. It is far more common that the view shared by almost all scientists is INCORRECT, than it is correct. The history of science is littered with the ideas of eminent scientists whose widely held views turned out to be just plain wrong. I wont bore anyone with a long list. But Newton supported the particle theory of light. For centuries his laws of motion were held to be gospel. Tesla was told that alternating motors dont work. Eminent scientists knew that some gases were permanent. Etc. etc.
Let me amend what you have written “but it’s much more common that a view shared by almost all scientist is correct, when there are also many scientists who have the view, IF THAT VIEW IS BASED ON HARD MEASURED DATA”.
Sorry, Pekka. In science only the facts matter; nothing else; particularly not the opinion of a bunch of eminent scientists. If you believe that CAGW is correct because almost all scientists agree it is correct, and that is the sole basis for your belief, and not the facts, then I really feel sorry for you.
Pekka’s an honest man except to himself, but he’s talented enough to also be a slippery sophist, elegantly illustrated here. He’s got nuttin’, Jim.
He’s got less on the ball than a fadeaway.
==================
Pekka, you are merely restating the consensus argument, without using the word. That most scientists accept this paradigm is the problem, not the answer, because there is now ample evidence for reasonable doubt.
Exactly. That was my stated purpose.
Pekka, good to leave out the ‘consensus’. Now leave out the ‘catastrophe’, too.
==========
Jim,
Where do we begin. The first thing you have to understand is that increasing GHGs will increase the forcing in Watts.
Change in GHG –> Change in Watts. That the first number you need to wrap your head around. Its important because if you cannot understand that, there is no hope for you to understand the rest of the science.
So, lets take C02. since we do not historical measurements of downwelling IR when the atmospheric concentration was 280 ppm, we cannot simple say this:
ppm 280: downwelling IR = x watts
ppm 560: downwelling IR = y watts.
That fact, the fact that we cannot double the C02 in the atmosphere and do a test before and after doesn’t stop science. It doesn’t stop engineering or science. I look at my laws of physics. I design a rocket. The laws of physics tell me that the rocket will reach space. I launch it. It reaches space. Now along comes the bright Jim Cripwell, and he suggests doubling the weight of the rocket while changing nothing else. Of course the launch manager says ” Jim, our rocket science says you are wrong”
And Jim replies ” Show me the measurements where you doubled the weight of the rocket and it didnt reach space !!!” of course, we look at Jim, and don’t know what to say. The very math and physics that got us to space tell us Jim is a lunatic. But he insists, “everything must be measured”. Well, the program manager shows him some physics and Jim says ” thats models, that math, I want measurements!!!, double the weight and launch it, its the real test!” So, we show Jim, some test results. We show him a rocket weighing 100 lbs and one weighing 200 lbs.. and we show him that we understand the physics.. that our models work.
NO! Jim says, that data shows the change from 100 to 200. This rocket is 20000 lbs and I say nothing will happen if we double that to 40K. lets do the experiment, damn your physics, damn your models. double the weight.
We try to explain to Jim that this physics is used in every day engineering. Every day we calculate the effect of adding C02 or other GHGs to the atmosphere. Every day, every minute of every day we use this rocket science. It’s not really rocket science anymore. It used to be.
Anyway, we cannot measure the effect of doubling C02 from 280 to 560 without actually doubling it and finding out. Ok That’s rocketman Jim’s view.
For other people, for working engineers, we rely on observations and known working theory. We can measure the effect of changing concentrations of GHGs on forcing.. we know how to observe the change forcing in going from X in the winter to Y in the summer. and we know the physical laws governing this. That known physics, validated by observation, confirmed by daily use by engineers is what tell us that going from 280 to 560 will get you 3.7 Watts or so. Its the same kind of logic our launch manager uses. Jim, our physics, which is based on observation, tells us that doubling the weight of the rocket is NOT going to work. It is foolish and unwise to insist on a test that we know will fail.
And Jim might ask for some of this observation data and known physics. Well, the known physics is radiative transfer. Every measurement of UHA depends upon it being right. Every radar engineer uses this physics. Anybody figuring out how the atmosphere reflects and absorbs radiation knows this. Cell phone base station designers. IR missile designers. Star wars engineers. C02 detector engineers. They all know the physics and the tools we use to estimate the change in forcing if you increase a GHG.
Here is nice little paper. If Jim doesnt understand this and what it means, then he’s got no business telling us that we can double the weight of the rocket without any concern.. after all , according to Jim, you really dont know what will happen until you double it and count the dead bodies.
We will start with something easy for Jim to grasp.
ftp://ftp.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/smcd/spb/lzhou/AMS86/PREPRINTS/PDFS/100737.pdf
Start with basics, the energy emitted from a greenhouse house gas is not related to the temperature of the gas. Cold gas can radiate as much energy as warm gas.
The amount energy radiated from a greenhouse gas is dependent upon some heat source which radiate at wavelength which excites a greenhouse gas. If one could somehow switch off the source of this energy, then the greenhouse gas stops radiating.
The temperature of any gas is related to the velocity of the gas molecule.
The temperature of solid or liquid is the velocity of molecules confined by molecular structure and solids and liquids radiate energy “near their surface”.
A solid or liquid on earth can be a source of radiant energy- as they cool they emit radiation. Gases are not a source of radiant energy, but emitter of radiant energy some other source of energy.
So solids or liquids can be heated up, and once heated [from the sun] they can be a source of radiant energy. Gases can store energy in terms having their average velocity increased.
So when you measuring radiant energy from greenhouse gases, this radiation is dependent of the source of this energy- which can be liquids or solids. Without the cooling of liquids or solids, the radiation from greenhouse gases would cease.
And therefore when one is measuring the radiation of greenhouse gases
you are indirectly measuring the cooling of liquids and solids.
You got all that wrong. The truth is exactly the opposite of what you write.
“You got all that wrong. The truth is exactly the opposite of what you write.”
Fascinating.
So the opposite would be what?
I didn’t want to get into anything I thought someone would disagree with.
Btw, the gas molecule of water is a source of heat when it becomes a liquid.
So phase changes of a gas can be a source of heat.
And obviously gases can warm via convection and conduction- but was keeping on topic of radiant properties of gas, liquids, and solids.
gbaikie, Pekka is right, there is some serious confusion in that post.
Start with basics, the energy emitted from a greenhouse house gas is not related to the temperature of the gas. Cold gas can radiate as much energy as warm gas.
The radiant energy of any object is dependent on the temperature and the emissivity of the object. Warmer can emit more than colder.
The amount energy radiated from a greenhouse gas is dependent upon some heat source which radiate at wavelength which excites a greenhouse gas. If one could somehow switch off the source of this energy, then the greenhouse gas stops radiating. As long as the gas had a temperature above 0K it would radiate. Shutting off the source of radiant energy that it can absorb would shut off the energy it can absorb from that source. It can still absorb energy through collision or from another source.
The temperature of any gas is related to the velocity of the gas molecule. Related but not dependent. You seem to be confusing velocity with kinetic energy. Molecules can vibrate, spin, twist etc. depending on the degrees of freedom they have.
The temperature of solid or liquid is the velocity of molecules confined by molecular structure and solids and liquids radiate energy “near their surface”.
A solid or liquid on earth can be a source of radiant energy- as they cool they emit radiation. Gases are not a source of radiant energy, but emitter of radiant energy some other source of energy.
So solids or liquids can be heated up, and once heated [from the sun] they can be a source of radiant energy. Gases can store energy in terms having their average velocity increased. Same deal, it is the degrees of freedom and velocity is just one degree of freedom. Every element, compound or alloy has different properties depending on their degrees of freedom which vary with temperature and pressure.
So when you measuring radiant energy from greenhouse gases, this radiation is dependent of the source of this energy- which can be liquids or solids. Without the cooling of liquids or solids, the radiation from greenhouse gases would cease.
And therefore when one is measuring the radiation of greenhouse gases
you are indirectly measuring the cooling of liquids and solids.
When you measure the radiant energy of anything, you are measuring its radiant energy. The measurement does tell you how it got that energy. You can infer where it got the energy, but you can’t track down the genealogy of each photon or vibration.
I think what you were trying to say is that greenhouse gases do not manufacture energy which is true, the energy they contain depends on the various sources of energy they can absorb and how much energy they can contain, their specific heat. If you shut off all energy to Earth, it would still emit radiant energy until all the molecules reached their lowest energy state. All the potential energy holding the atmosphere up against gravity would be convert into kinetic energy as the atmosphere collapsed. All the latent energy would be released as the fluid molecules combined into a final frozen solid. Then all the frozen solids would continue to radiate energy until all molecular motion stopped. That BTW is a crap load of energy which is the real reason the Earth is still here, it can weather a pretty good storm with its back-up potential energy. That is also why radiant focused modeling misses the over all energy picture. The Earth can loss some types of energy faster than it can regain that energy. The Earth has thermal masses with thermal capacities with varying absorption and release rates and locations the thermal masses can lose of gain energy. It is not a billiard ball floating in space :)
Since someone thinks I am completely wrong I will correct some of my port [clarify and edit any mistakes].
“Cold gas can radiate as much energy as warm gas.”
Meaning not hot gases.
So warm would up to 100 C and cool can be cryogenic, say -150 C.
Or within the temperatures found in the earth’s atmosphere.
“The amount energy radiated from a greenhouse gas is dependent upon some heat source which radiate at wavelength which excites a greenhouse gas.
Should be:
The amount energy radiated from a greenhouse gas is dependent upon a heat source which radiates at a certain wavelengths which will excite a greenhouse gas. ”
“The temperature of any gas is related to the velocity of the gas molecule.”
Meaning temperature of any gas in the earth atmosphere. Or the air temperature of 70 F at noon, is measuring the velocity of gas molecules effect upon on thermometer.
“Gases are not a source of radiant energy, but emitter of radiant energy some other source of energy.”
Should be:
Gases are not a source of the radiant energy, but rather are an emitter of radiant energy from some other source of the radiant energy.
“Gases can store energy in terms having their average velocity increased.”
Should be:
Gases can store potential kinetic energy in terms having their average velocity increased.
“So when you measuring radiant energy from greenhouse gases, this radiation is dependent of the source of this energy- which can be liquids or solids.”
Should be:
So when you are measuring radiant energy from greenhouse gases, this radiation is dependent upon the source of this energy- which can be liquids or solids.”
-The amount energy radiated from a greenhouse gas is dependent upon some heat source which radiate at wavelength which excites a greenhouse gas. If one could somehow switch off the source of this energy, then the greenhouse gas stops radiating. As long as the gas had a temperature above 0K it would radiate.”
If you stop the velocity of all the molecules of say mole of gas, you will have 0 K, and if slow them down to around say 1 mph, it’s pretty cold- close to 0 K.
“Shutting off the source of radiant energy that it can absorb would shut off the energy it can absorb from that source. It can still absorb energy through collision or from another source.”
Well you talking about kinetic energy- billiard balls and heat/energy caused by collision of them. Molecules of ideal gas are considered frictionless- not as inefficient in transferring kinetic energy as billiard balls are.
And you bring in a topic which leads down side roads and alleys- Something I would regard as complication which is fairly insignificant and I was just trying to state what I considered basic major elements.
“When you measure the radiant energy of anything, you are measuring its radiant energy. ”
Which like saying if measure something which is a meter long, it’s a meter long.
“The measurement does tell you how it got that energy. You can infer where it got the energy, but you can’t track down the genealogy of each photon or vibration.”
I think you meant “The measurement does [not] tell you how it got that energy.”
But at night time when sun is not shining, the source of most energy is from what the sun heated up. But this rather off topic. Radiant energy is involving photon [wave/particle] traveling at speed of light. Radiant energy is not stored.
Heat can be stored and can become radiant energy. The main elements on earth which store heat or energy are land and ocean, water, and water gas molecules, and the atmosphere in terms of it’s kinetic energy.
The whole idea of greenhouse theory [which I didn’t mention] is a mechanism which to slows the loss of heat. Or a greenhouse isn’t heating anything, it’s delaying heat loss. Nor does a blanket [unless it’s an electric blanket] create heat, instead it delays heat loss.
So if the greenhouse doesn’t have heat in it, or the person is dead, the greenhouse or the blanket does not cause things to be warm.
One could argue about greenhouse theory, but I wasn’t.
“If you stop the velocity of all the molecules of say mole of gas, you will have 0 K, and if slow them down to around say 1 mph, it’s pretty cold- close to 0 K.” This velocity thing is through you off. That molecule could be traveling at the speed of light and still be at 0K. Velocity by itself is a potential energy. Changing the velocity is kinetic energy. A vibration mode requires energy which means it is going to lose energy, Entropy is king of the universe. Gravity is a constant acceleration which is a potential energy, it doesn’t generate heat unless it changes the motion of something. I was just looking at an induction cook top it has a magnetic field, but doesn’t generate heat until is causes something, ferrous metal in a pot, to vibrate. Everything is about changes in kinetic energy.
That is another of the issues with the radiant model perspective and the down welling long wave concept. Engineers use net radiant energy because that is an indication of the difference or change. You can pick any number you like for DWLR, unless it causes a change in something it just noise. If they wanted a value for DWLR that had a meaning, they could pick 220Wm-2 which is about the radiant portion of the Greenhouse effect plus the loss of energy to entropy for the constant change the greenhouse effect produces.
“Pekka Pirilä | July 14, 2012 at 6:18 pm |
You got all that wrong. The truth is exactly the opposite of what you write.”
Hmm I think see the problem. I mentioned the term greenhouse gas, and therefore it become all about greenhouse theory.
Sort of like mentioning Jesus Christ on the topic of morality.
–“If you stop the velocity of all the molecules of say mole of gas, you will have 0 K, and if slow them down to around say 1 mph, it’s pretty cold- close to 0 K.” —
-This velocity thing is through you off. That molecule could be traveling at the speed of light and still be at 0K-
That is true, but is why I said a mole of gas. Or a quantity of gas contained.
“First, let me introduce the scientific meaning of temperature: it is a measure of the energy content of matter. When air is hot, the molecules move fast and they have high kinetic energy. The colder the molecules are, the smaller their velocities are and, subsequently, their energy. Temperature is simply a way to characterize the energy of a system.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-are-temperatures-clos
a little java graphic:
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/temperature.html
“Cold Atoms Create New Matter
At room temperatures, atoms move at the speed of a jet airplane. At less than 1 nanokelvin, the atoms screech to a crawl, moving only one inch every 30 seconds. Atomic energy corresponds to heat since atoms’ motion generates heat. So very slow-moving atoms are also very cold. ”
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97536&page=1#.UAIc_ZHC1lI
“You can pick any number you like for DWLR, unless it causes a change in something it just noise. If they wanted a value for DWLR that had a meaning, they could pick 220Wm-2 which is about the radiant portion of the Greenhouse effect plus the loss of energy to entropy for the constant change the greenhouse effect produces.”
I agree.
But I thought I would start by by over basic stuff before getting into anything we normally argue about. :)
gbaikie, you are getting closer. As all good redneck theoretical physicist say, ” it ain’t the fall, its that sudden stop at the end that kills ya :)”
The velocity of the molecules in the mole or the mole as a packaging, is not indicative of the heat content. It is the number of collisions and the vibrational or rotational states those collisions induce. If the kinetic energy of the molecules produces a photon emission, then one of those vibrational or rotational states changed to a lower energy level. If that photon happens to find a molecule in its path that can be raised to a higher energy state by that photon, then that molecule gains energy, the net energy change of the mole in that case is zero, so who cares :)
When you look at the whole mole, then the net energy going in that mole will be the same as coming out of that mole, if the mole is in equilibrium, which is meaningless without a time constant, BTW. Since Entropy is king of the universe, nothing is ever in true equilibrium unless Ein=Eout + δS, which seems to be ignored by many :)
“The velocity of the molecules in the mole or the mole as a packaging, is not indicative of the heat content. It is the number of collisions and the vibrational or rotational states those collisions induce.”
I agree the amount collisions and vibrations, and rotations is what is measured when gas warms a chunk of metal.
“If the kinetic energy of the molecules produces a photon emission, then one of those vibrational or rotational states changed to a lower energy level. If that photon happens to find a molecule in its path that can be raised to a higher energy state by that photon, then that molecule gains energy, the net energy change of the mole in that case is zero, so who cares :)
Yes.
And if instead a photon escapes “the herd” loses a small amount of energy. And any photon has very little energy even billions of them. And a visible light photon has more energy than infrared photon. And what any photon does when it then encounter anything in terms of adding heat is yet another issue.
“When you look at the whole mole, then the net energy going in that mole will be the same as coming out of that mole, if the mole is in equilibrium, which is meaningless without a time constant, BTW. Since Entropy is king of the universe, nothing is ever in true equilibrium unless Ein=Eout + δS, which seems to be ignored by many :) ”
Yes.
But like the apparent many, I will also ignore this equation :)
I didn’t know we were even missing a time constant- I assume it has something to do what wonderful party the photon have no time to waste getting to?
gbaikie, “But like the apparent many, I will also ignore this equation
I didn’t know we were even missing a time constant- I assume it has something to do what wonderful party the photon have no time to waste getting to?”
The missing time constants are in the various non radiate thermal processes in the system. Solar is absorbed at various depths in the oceans. Depending on the depth, salinity and all the other fun stuff, that portion of Ein does not become a part of Eout until the δS of the oceans layers between where it was absorbed allows it to get out to where it can be emitted. There are time constants of minutes to millenia.
If you assume we are currently in “equilibrium”, but we are a few centuries away, you get a funky answer. This is where an entropy model would help figure out where we are relative to “equilibrium”. The fun part is that as the system approaches “equilibrium” what appeared to be a first order forcing may be reduced to a second or third order forcing and some poor little second or third order forcing promoted to a first or high second order forcing. Then everyone is shocked by the “black swan” event :O To avoid that, you could think Ein=Eout -W +S, where W, work is done in steady state balance by S entropy in steady state. A “conditional equilibrium” with a “conditional steady state”. You could define W as growing an ice sheet, increasing ocean heat capacity and/or maintaining a certain lapse rate. That would be an Aqua world atmospheric energy model. The more thermodynamic boundary layers in the model the fewer the surprises. Still it is a complex non-linear dynamic system, but with the right model there aren’t surprises as much as they are discoveries :)
This 1995 ocean mixing layer “regime” change,
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
Could be a discovery, but looks like it is going to be another surprise for the climate team. Though, I suspect the next cool AMO will be weaker than normal or the solar minimum will get the credit so they can continue patting their models on the back after adjusting the aerosols a touch.
“The missing time constants are in the various non radiate thermal processes in the system. Solar is absorbed at various depths in the oceans. Depending on the depth, salinity and all the other fun stuff, that portion of Ein does not become a part of Eout until the δS of the oceans layers between where it was absorbed allows it to get out to where it can be emitted. There are time constants of minutes to millenia.”
Oh, ok.
“If you assume we are currently in “equilibrium”, but we are a few centuries away, you get a funky answer.”
I don’t see how we could anywhere near such equilibrium.
“This is where an entropy model would help figure out where we are relative to “equilibrium”. The fun part is that as the system approaches “equilibrium” what appeared to be a first order forcing may be reduced to a second or third order forcing and some poor little second or third order forcing promoted to a first or high second order forcing.”
Interesting, so CO2 for example might make a difference.
I don’t agree, I will grant it’s possible.
“Then everyone is shocked by the “black swan” event :O ”
It’s seems you would get less black swans.
But you seem to be talking about global event.
And if you get a global event, it seems one could an approximation
of this in a regional context.
Yes, no?
“To avoid that, you could think Ein=Eout -W +S, where W, work is done in steady state balance by S entropy in steady state. A “conditional equilibrium” with a “conditional steady state”. You could define W as growing an ice sheet, increasing ocean heat capacity and/or maintaining a certain lapse rate.”
Ice sheet? Not ice caps? Not polar sea ice?
And we getting colder?
Or warmer? Or none of above?
I don’t understand.
“I don’t see how we could anywhere near such equilibrium.”
In order to determine that a doubling of CO2 would produce a no feed back sensitivity you have to have some initial condition, equilibrium, as a starting point.
“Interesting, so CO2 for example might make a difference.
I don’t agree, I will grant it’s possible.”
CO2 does have an impact, but it is non-linear. A warmer world is more humid which tends to reduce the impact of CO2 globally and enhance it regionally. CO2 is a neat part of the thermostat. There can be too much, but it doesn’t look like we are all that close to the too much. It is always better to be safe than sorry, just don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
“It’s seems you would get less black swans.
But you seem to be talking about global event.
And if you get a global event, it seems one could an approximation
of this in a regional context.
Yes, no?”
Black Swans are always a part of life. At a higher normal set point, there would be a different mix of black swans than at a lower set point. Judging by the paleo precipitation reconstructions, droughts look like the new black swans.
“Ice sheet? Not ice caps? Not polar sea ice?
And we getting colder?
Or warmer? Or none of above?
I don’t understand.”
It is a bi-stable climate. Ice mass, mainly land based, is one of the variables. If you think of perfectly balance northern and southern hemisphere ice as normal, shifting to more southern ice is warm and more northern is cold because land amplifies global average surface temperature. More NH ice would produce a cold AMO by shifting the tropical belt south. At least that is the way it looks to me and my slide rule :)
gbaikie,
I haven’t participated in the discussion because I wrote my first short message just before shutting down my computer for the night.
Capt.Dallas has given many correct answers but not exactly as I would give them.
The main starting points are for me:
1 ) Each CO2 molecule (or other multi-atomic molecule) can be in different vibrational and states. Switching states may occur by absorbing and emitting radiation or due to collisions with other molecules.
2 ) The collisions are much, much more frequent in troposphere and lower part of stratosphere than emission and absorption.
3 ) A molecule in an exited states emits with (almost) exactly the same rate independently of the way it got exited. Because collisions are so much more common than absorption, almost all emission is by molecules exited by collisions.
4 ) The share of molecules in an exited state grows exponentially with temperature as long as the share is not large. In case of CO2 at atmospheric temperatures the share of molecules in an exited state that corresponds to the 15 um IR radiation is several percent (around 6 percent). The incoming radiation has very little influence on this share.
5 ) Based on the above the strength of emission from CO2 in certain volume of atmosphere is (almost) totally determined by the temperature, the amount of CO2 and properties of the CO2 molecule. Incoming radiation has no direct influence on that. Incoming radiation does, however, bring energy to the system as every absorption gives first vibrational energy to a molecule and then this is released to the thermal motion in the next molecular collision of that molecule. The energy may, however, be brought to the volume also by other means. Thus no incoming radiation is needed for emission.
===
I hope you understand now, what I meant by my first short message. I interpreted your message to have two main points: “emission does not depend on temperature” and “emission is fully dependent on absorption”, while the correct statements are exactly the opposite.
I have given more numbers on these issues in some earlier message months ago but I don’t have those numbers now and finding own earlier messages is far too much effort.
Mosh’s “Something easy for Jim to grasp” paper.
From what I can make out, the general AGW overview is this :-
The sun’s shortwave rays reach down to the earth’s surface (both ocean and land).
Some of this energy is re-radiated back up again by the surface, but as longwave
Greenhouse gasses happen to absorb longwave
But they then then re-radiate all (?) of it (thus remaining at the same temperature). This re-radiation happens in all directions, which means some of the re-radiated longwave it makes its way back down to the earth’s surface
Unlike a greenhouse gas, the earth’s surface does not re-radiate the longwave it absorbs. Instead it retains this energy and so must warm up. This is the point where AGW becomes apparent, the warmed land and oceans now warming the atmosphere by direct contact.
And obviously the more greenhouse gas you add, the greater the warming.
” earth’s surface does not re-radiate the longwave it absorbs” ??
Yes it does. You’ve probably heard the argument that if you add insulation to your walls and ceiling, and fit double glazing etc then these stop the heat leaving your house. That’s the wrong way to look at it.
The amount of heat leaving is just the same as it was before! That’s the principle of equilibrium. But the inside temperature has to be higher to drive out that heat. That’s the right way to look at it.
Similarly with the Earth: the increased opaqueness of the atmosphere to longwave IR radiation, caused by GH gases, means that the Earth has to be warmer than it would be to radiate the same amount into free space, if the atmosphere was less opaque.
tempterrain | July 15, 2012 at 3:18 am |
says
Yes the earth’s surface does re-radiate the longwave it absorbs
In that case – in terms of what I suggest above – what happens next ?
The longwave goes back up to the GHGs, some of it comes down again, goes back up again, some of that coming down again … ad infinitim, with nothing ever getting warmed??
Something doesn’t add up in your account, surely.
Erica,
The Earth’s surface mainly gets warmed from sunlight in the visible part of the spectrum. That’s where the energy from the sun is most intense and that’s probably why our eyes have evolved to be sensitive in that region. So we can see the energy coming in. Every ‘visible’ photon coming in makes the Earth hotter.
So if energy came in, without any going out, the Earth would get hotter and hotter indefinitely. That doesn’t happen so there must be energy leaving too, but which we can’t see. This is sometimes called radiant heat in the infra red region. Every invisible IR photon going out makes the Earth cooler. The cooler the Earth the fewer the IR photons emitted and the warmer the Earth the more IR photons are emitted, so naturally at some temperature the number emitted is exactly right to balance the heat from the visible ones coming in.
However, if the IR photons don’t make it into space they can be reflected ( or rather absorbed and re-radiated) back onto the Earth’s surface which will cause it to be warmer than it would be otherwise. A cloudy night is warmer for this reason. Some IR is reflected (absorbed -reradiated) back from the clouds. GH gases work the same way. Anything that causes the atmosphere to be more opaque to IR radiation will also cause the surface to be warmer.
The Earth has to ‘work harder’ , if you like, to radiate the same amount of radiation into space if the IR transmission path gets blocked. It has to radiate more IR photons to compensate for the ones being reflected back. It can only do that by getting warmer.
Pekka
That is a good common ground for discussion. Let the the truth be the judge.
How come you have not included the fact that the observed warming rate is less than that projected by the IPCC?
When are we going the see the AGW side openly acknowledge the current plateau?
When are we going the see the AGW side openly acknowledge the current plateau?
Only if it can be explained away. Otherwise never.
Girma,
I was discussing what’s known about climate, not what IPCC is saying in some part of its report or erroneously claimed to say.
The observed warming is certainly consistent with what I wrote.
…erroneously claimed to say.
Prediction=> http://bit.ly/xColbo (IPCC’s own graph)
Observation=> http://bit.ly/NsOarA (For the same dataset used for the above prediction)
Indeed.
Picking a plot and misinterpreting that is making erroneous – or at least misleading claims
You have been told often enough what’s wrong with this interpretatin. Thus I don’t repeat that.
Actually Pekka, you are only discussing a small part of what is known, namely the AGW part. For example, it is also known that the feedbacks and other mechanisms that you mention in passing are in principle capable of negating the GHG forcing. It is known that these factors are not well understood, that we are emerging from a little ice age, which was preceded by a MWP that appears to have been warmer than today, etc.
Focusing on the AGW part gives a misleading impression of the science.
David, the MWP and the LIA complications on determining climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing doesn’t seem to be adequate for those on the higher climate science consciousness levels.
Perhaps, “In a bi-stable thermodynamic system, the natural drift from one semi-stable energy state to another can complicate the determination of the impact of an external forcing on either semi-stable state.” that sounds sexier.
Then you can whip this on them,
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rRs69Ekl9Zc/T_7kMjPiejI/AAAAAAAAChY/baz0GHWEGbI/s917/60000%2520years%2520of%2520climate%2520change%2520plus%2520or%2520minus%25201.25%2520degrees.png
“For the past 60,000 years, the tropical region of the Earth has drifted between two semi-stable energy states, the lower normal state and the higher normal states are approximately 1.25 C degrees above and below the mean of the two states, based on the TEX86 LakeTanganyika temperature reconstruction. With a drift of 1.25C likely common in the tropical region, a modern era increase of 0.8C is in now way exceptional unless the reference state for the 0.8C increase was near or above the higher normal energy state.”
See, no mention of the MWP or the LIA, just a nice nudge to look at the bleeding data and stop assuming the IPCC “normal” is correct when the IPCC assumed normal could be below normal!
Then you could whip out the ENSO region temperature trends for the past 30 to 50 years, to show how amazingly stable they have been during the unprecedented CO2 caused “global warming”. How the IPCC models have consistently over estimated the CO2 impact in the tropical regions. Even point out the the rate of energy increase would to decay to zero as the system approached either of the bi-stable energy states with some likelihood of overshooting the state initially, reversing the direction of decay.
Kinda like this, . http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
or like this,
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/UAHoceansStratosphere1979to2002and2002to2011.png
They will of course disagree that any of that is at all possible, since it is not part of the consensus theory and likely attempt to explain how CO2 forcing is well understood but complicated, so you should trust them :)
Very nice Capt. Alas I am addicted to simplicity. Abstract sensitivity to CO2 doubling is irrelevant. What matters is what is actually happening, which we should know we do not know. Someday we may actually get some polling that asks the right questions.
David, but you have to understand the other side. They thrive on complexity because they equate it with job security. Remember a lone professor with a slide rule…? It take a village of climate scientists to replace a light bulb :)
david
“. It is known that these factors are not well understood, that we are emerging from a little ice age, which was preceded by a MWP that appears to have been warmer than today, etc..
####
you think that the MWP is warmer than today?
That implies you accept the temperature records of today.
So lets get down to some estimates: How much cooler than today was the LIA? and how much warmer was the MWP?
you seem to be speaking with knowledge.. cough some up
Pekka, saying greater surface warming is very likely is a strong claim, not a weak one. What is your basis for this claim?
It’s a little weaker than the corresponding statement in AR4.
It’s my assessment on what almost all scientists do agree upon including many of the more skeptical ones. You don’t count in that.
Please explain the hypothesis, or give me the AR4 citation. It is a new argument to me.
AR4, WG1, TS, p. 65:
“It [the equilibrium climate sensitivity] is very unlikely to be less than 1.5C.”
Pekka your quote says nothing about the surface warming being greater than the atmospheric warming. That is the claim I am asking about. It implies two different sensitivities, hence my confusion.
You misunderstood my text. My reference is the effective radiative temperature of the Earth as seen from space, not the surface temperature or the atmospheric temperature at some fixed altitude. My choice was that to make the claim even less certain.
Not “.. less certain” but “.. less uncertain”.
Thank you for the clarification. I agree that is the commonly accepted AGW paradigm.
In scanning through sections of the NIPCC report I was struck by the following claim:
“It appears almost certain that surface-based
temperature histories of the globe contain a
significant warming bias introduced by insufficient
corrections for the non-greenhouse-gas-induced urban
heat island effect.”
The statement includes a dog’s dinner of imprecise words and phrases: “it appears almost certain…significant…insufficient”. And even at the time it was written there was virtually no evidence to back it up, and very few scientists that would support it.
I’d be interested to know if people could find any similar phrases in the IPCC report. One comparitor would perhaps be the attribution statement:
“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentration”
but that statement is a far more precise expression of the writers’ judgement (Most means more than 50%; “very likely” was defined elsewhere in the report).
I also noticed that the NIPCC reproduction of the Hockey Stick removed all the uncertainty ranges – which is a highly unscientific thing to do.
Looks like I am putting effort into “discrediting this report”. Am I justified in doing so?
Skeptics guilty of double standards and inconsistency. I am shocked.
Steve Milesworthy
Just a few phrases from IPCC that meet your specification of ambiguity while exuding overconfidence and downplaying uncertainty:
IPCC AR4 WG1 Ch.3, p.240:
AR4 WG1 FAQ3.1, Figure 1:
This is the infamous “smoke and mirrors” chart comparing shorter more-recent warming periods with longer periods, with footnote:
[The same comparison in reverse would have shown steeper warming from 1910 to 1940 than from 1910 to 2000, indicating “decelerated warming”?.]
AR4 WG1 SPM, p.5:
[see above comment]
AR4 WG1 SPM, p.9:
Paleoclimate information [*] supports the information that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years.
[*the now-discredited Mann “hockey stick” and copies]
AR4 WG1 SPM, p.10
AR4 WG1 SPM, Table SPM.2., p.8:
Increasing trend of heavy precipitation events over the late 20th centuryis said to likely [greater than 66%] have increased with a human contribution to observed trend to have been more likely than not [greater than 50%], based on expert judgement rather than formal attribution studies.
From this rater dicey data the conclusion is drawn that the likelihood of future trends based on projections for the 21st century is very likely [greater than 90%]
HUH?
Etc., etc.
Max
Thanks Max,
I can see why you picked some of these, but all of them seem to me more measured, better cited and more traceable (ie. you can work out why they came to this judgement), and the judgement is often supported by a broad range of the literature.
1. Not controversial, not a statement that overly strongly supports AGW.
2. “indicating accelerated” is a judgement call – it doesn’t say “proving that warming is accelerated. A similar exercise around 1940s would show you that the trend was very sensitive to end-point choices. Checking today, 6 years on, the 25 year trends (1986-2011) in HadCRUT3 and GISSTEMP are about the same as they were in this plot’s period (1980-2005) so neither acceleration nor deceleration. The highest OLS trend for the early period lasts for about 34 years (1909-1943). You get the same trend for 1965-2011 (46 years in HadCRUT3 which is known to downplay the recent warming).
3. As 2). I agree that the 1910-40 period is of interest, but it is discussed in the report and since objectively it starts with a pronounced dip and ends with a pronounced bump one rightly questions the strength of the feature.
4. The hockey stick is not “discredited”. The vision of the Hockey stick as being the certain evidence that the CWP is warmer than the MWP has perhaps been discredited if it ever existed in anyone’s mind. “Supports the information” is a suitably moderate statement.
5. Don’t see anything problematical or controversial in this. “Likely” is a defined term in WG1. The work is cited.
6. The way you have put it sounds bad – but you’ve cut and pasted comments from different parts of the table to ensure they do! The actual comment in the foot-note to the table is as follows, so the statement about “expert judgement” is ensuring the presented results are under-played rather than over-played:
“Magnitude of anthropogenic contributions not assessed. Attribution for these phenomena based on expert judgement rather than formal attribution studies.”
Stve
Thanks for confirming my conclusion.
Max
Judith,
You state that our knowledge base is limited.
But any new area trying to be introduced is totally ignored for the current consensus which ALSO controls the peer review process of publishing.
The government grant system is totally bias toward a certain outcome that they expect from the consensus scientists.
So, science knowledge is NOT allowed to be following paths of knowledge but conceived by these consensus to follow the same path or be punished.
Laws and theories have to be protected at ALL COSTS and NOT allowed to be expanded or corrected as many tenured positions would be in jeopardy for teaching incorrect material that they would defend no matter how incorrect they would be.
The whole area of planetary mechanics was missed due to scientists following mathematical formulas and NOT the physical evidence.
Dr Curry, you state “While the NIPCC is nowhere near as well known as the IPCC, much effort has been undertaken by those that support the IPCC consensus to discredit skeptical voices including the NIPCC.” without postulating any reasons for this.
Perhaps it is because the NIPCC is a propoganda document published by a propoganda organisation (Heartland Institute) and is not based on hundreds of independently peer reviewed published scientific papers?
Do you honestly believe that the NIPCC reports are in any way equivalent to those of the IPCC?
They are equivalent in presenting the counter arguments to the IPCC arguments. They do include citations by the way. Of course the IPCC has a much larger budget.
While the NIPCC is nowhere near as well known as the IPCC, much effort has been undertaken by those that support the IPCC consensus to discredit skeptical voices including the NIPCC.
There is no citation to support this claim so it is unclear who you are talking about.
Discrediting what is written in the NIPCC report is not the same as discrediting the “skeptical voices”. The latter implies that the criticisms are personal, whereas one can point out the many flaws in the NIPCC without being personal.
Further, given that the “IPCC consensus” has such a wide set of definitions (as discussed by the paper and in this thread), one should not define a group as being “those that support the IPCC consensus”.
Do try to spell propaganda correctly. I wouldn’t point it out except for the fact that if you can’t be bothered to check something simple like spelling, how can you be relied on to check your facts in other contexts? Like the fact that the IPCC is very definitely a propaganda organisation?
Since you are so perfect, Michael, why have you put a question mark at the end? Is it perhaps an indication that you know you are on shakey ground when you use the word “fact” instead of “opinion”?
The world’s leading climate scientist says governments’ reluctance to tackle the causes of climate change means they should be bypassed in favour of global ‘people power’.
Climate change was marginalised at the Rio+20 talks, in an apparent attempt by the hosts Brazil to make coming to a final agreement as straightforward as possible – mindful of how controversial the topic has become.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that the experience of Rio proves that the political will to take action simply isn’t there – and argues that a new form of activism is the only answer.
“I would submit that the time has come that we shouldn’t really wait for governments,” he said.
“Governments will of course have to play their own role – but what we really need to rely on is creating awareness among the people, so that each one of us in our own way should start treating this problem as serious – and meeting the challenge that confronts us today.
“Climate change was officially not on the agenda for Rio, but there is no getting away from the fact that everything that is being discussed [in Rio] is intimately connected with climate change.
“So I think it would be totally unrealistic to believe that we can talk about a green economy, sustainable development or the problem of poverty without dealing with the issues connected with climate change.
“Climate change is in a sense the 10-tonne gorilla which is in the room and you’re not going to get rid of him easily.”
No propaganda there, then.
Reference for above:
http://www.rtcc.org/policy/dr-rajendra-pachauri-time-to-forget-governments-and-use-people-power-to-fight-climate-change/
In the context of the original comment, you are confusing the IPCC chair with those that contribute to the writing of the report. I’d also add that attaching the word propaganda to any statement of political intent is just, erm…, propaganda.
I don’t really give a tinker’s cuss whether it is directly said by the monkeys or by the organ grinder. They are all ‘the IPCC’ to me.
And what do you call it when the word “propaganda” is left off a description of something that is propaganda ? 2nd-order propaganda?
In the context of the original comment, you are confusing the IPCC chair with those that contribute to the writing of the report. I’d also add that attaching the word propaganda to any statement of political intent is just, erm…, propaganda.
Damn, fancy my imagining that the chair of the IPCC didn’t have anything to do with its propagandism. I’m gratified, however, that you implicitly accept that a statement of political intent can be propaganda. I say it is in this case. You say it’s not. Surprise, surprise–the pope is Catholic.
Louise
Some scientists take the NIPCC seriously. See: On the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) Wang Shaowu,Luo Yong,Zhao Zongci, Peking U, etc. Note their wisdom:
Citizen auditors quantitatively found 30% of the IPCC citations are to grey literature! See Donna at NoFrakkingConsensus. You call that “scientific”?
It does not appear that you have read either the IPCC or NIPCC reports. How can you comment that either are scientific or political?
Louise
For international perspective, see Labohm, Hans, Climate Policy: Quo Vadis? (2010). Amsterdam Law Forum, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1876383
Labohm cites the NIPCC and accurately predicted the outcome of the IPCC’s 2009 Copenhagen meeting.
Louise
Get serious, ma’am.
Heartland (parent of NIPCC) is a “political” organization, as you write.
So is the UN, parent of IPCC.
“Hundreds of independently peer reviewed published scientific papers”?
Fuggidaboudit, Louise.
Add: “carefully selected and edited to ensure conformity to the consensus premise” and you may be getting closer to the truth.
Max
Judy, I’d suggest keeping it shorter and more focused.
I find the current climate community is best described as a ‘pseudo community’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck):
Pseudocommunity: In the first stage, well-intentioned people try to demonstrate their ability to be friendly and sociable, but they do not really delve beneath the surface of each other’s ideas or emotions. They use obvious generalities and mutually-established stereotypes in speech. Instead of conflict resolution, pseudocommunity involves conflict avoidance, which maintains the appearance or facade of true community. It also serves only to maintain positive emotions, instead of creating safe space for honesty and love through bad emotions as well. While they still remain in this phase, members will never really obtain evolution or change, as individuals or as a bunch.
There is some progress toward true community by some, for example Mike Wallace’s recent call out of extreme spring weather attribution. Unfortunately, I don’t think the egos involved at the gatekeeper level will allow real community. I think we’ll have to end up with an independent certification process, particularly for observational data sets.
Regards, John
PS – Istvan we now have 30 years of UTH data, check our paper:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010JD014847.shtml
We include what should be the mandatory 95% confidence test accounting for persistence in the time series. You need to do that test for your trend figures…
+1: Nice work John.
thanks john, useful comment
I see that stage 2 is chaos and stage 3 is emptiness. They should be fun to watch, and the sooner the better. Perhaps the chaos phase has started, with the community calling on social scientists, etc., to explain its failure.
Consensus is a blunt instrument which is unsuited to repairing complex mechanisms.
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/840/
“Although, as in any developing scientific topic, there is a minority of opinions which we have not been able to accommodate, the peer review has helped to ensure a high degree of consensus among authors and reviewers regarding the results presented. Thus the Assessment is an authoritative statement of the views of the international scientific community at this time….”
Translation: “We ignored everyone who disagrees with us and used the peer review system to silence any other opposition therefore consensus is achieved. Thus we are now the scientific authorities on this subject.”
I do not think that you realize how fatally flawed the IPCC is for the purpose that it espouses. It was created to justify political policy using science as a cloak to hide its true motives and a shield against any and all critique.
Way forward: START OVER. The science must separated from the policy discussion. Until the science of climate is better understood, policy discussions are useless and continue to be a colossal waste of time and money.
“Until the science of climate is better understood” Well hopefully it never will be eh? And even if it is, there’ll always be someone around to say it still isn’t good enough, won’t there?
You’ll be able to keep that argument going for years, if not indefinitely.
Let’s hope so. That’s what science is.
Andrew
Very difficult for me to interpret your remark as anything other than an admission that the ‘science of climate’ is not well understood.
And i don’t think that loudly shouting that a few hundred all agree that they think they understand it well enough will convince the rest of us that it is.
Temp, you misunderstand the point. Uncertainty has increased sharply in the last decade or so, with a proliferation of competing hypotheses and data. Science is like that.
You mean that, at some stage, those who are now making the argument that no mitigation of CO2 emissions is necessary until the science is “better understood” will ever say something like “OK well that’s good enough for me. That piece of new science has completely changed my perception of the problem”.
I have my doubts about that! But this is because I’ve “misunderstood the point” is it?
tempterrain | July 14, 2012 at 9:57 am | Reply
> there’ll always be someone around to say [climate science] still isn’t good enough [to act on], won’t there? You’ll be able to keep that argument going for years, if not indefinitely.
The reality is there has always been someone around to say climate science IS good enough, starting with the global cooling scare of the ’70s. Some even argue the very lack of quality predictions (certainty) is grounds enough to act.
A few thoughts re “consensus.” First, there is a distinction among those who take issue with consensus. Some (like Thatcher) dismiss the concept of consensus as some kind of weak agreement in the absence of strong leadership. Others (like Crichton) reject the term “consensus” as a powerplay to eliminate dissent from the position taken by an elite. The latter’s quote pertains specifically to climate science, and indeed the term has become vilified by those who want to disagree with the establishment (i.e. IPCC).
So I will avoid the term, and instead speak of “shared understanding” as a fundamental sociological and organizational reality. Any human enterprise or collaboration depends upon a shared understanding among the participants as to their mission, objectives, methods, and so forth. Sociologists have described how the strength of these convictions must exceed the threat posed from outside the group–e.g. Military discipline must be intense in order to face the armed enemy. Climategate showed that some climate scientists felt similarly under attack.
A group with a shared understanding works together because individuals accept the same basic notions, while each one may also have ideas not shared widely, but which do not fundamentally contradict the base. In a field like climate science, addressing a wicked problem with many uncertainties, the shared understanding should be dynamic, not rigid.
I think the failure in climate science has been to try to promote an all-encompassing set of conclusions, rather than to work slowly from a small but solid base of shared understandings to reach a larger comprehension, including uncertainties.
i like your last sentence especially
Unlike Judith I like your first three paragraphs especially, except perhaps for the bit about military discipline .
Yes a consensus is a ‘shared understanding’ and not, as a Judith might have you believe, and as I mentioned in a previous sub-thread, a unanimity of opinion.
Whatever’s the matter with you? Where does Judith say she regards consensus as unanimity of opinion? Why then should she “especially” like the idea of working slowly from a “solid base of shared understandings to reach a larger comprehension”?.
I’d say its the word uncertainty she likes rather than any other! See my previous remarks on the use of the phrase “manufactured consensus”.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/13/no-consensus-on-consensus-part-ii/#comment-219240
Roughly equivalent to criminals feeling under attack from the law.
I’m a fan of the first three paragraphs as well. Too bad that Judith doesn’t seem to see their value.
“Consensus”-bashing is silly.. Consensus can be a wonderful way to reach group unity whereby everyone has a chance to express their views and everyone signs on to take a stake in the outcome. Or consensus can suck.
It seems rather trivial to be so partisan as to cherry-pick to find something lacking in an inherently variable process such as consensus-building.
Next, Judith will cull among the thousands of times that commonly shared scientific perspectives were reached to make implications by cherry-picking those occasions when commonly shared scientific perspectives were wrong.
Oh.
Wait.
It is the foolish or those who intentionally try to mislead who like to claim a consensus without specifically stating on what issue they claim that a consensus has been achieved.
In climate science it appears that there is a consensus on only the basic concept of AGW and not on the most important issues. The most important issues are the rate of warming and what will happen to conditions that are important to humans as a result. There is clearly no consensus on those issues.
“Yearly (2009) characterizes the IPCC consensus building process as “an exercise in collective judgment about subjective Bayesian likelihoods in areas of uncertain knowledge.” Goodwin (2011) argues that the IPCC consensus is a manufactured consensus, resulting from an intentional consensus building process. Judging the manufactured consensus of the IPCC by Lehrer’s standards implies that the IPCC consensus is not intellectually meaningful. This argument does not imply that the IPCC’s conclusions are necessarily incorrect, but leads to the conclusion that the consensus building process employed by the IPCC does not lend intellectual substance to their arguments.” – JC
I don’t think that this is a particularly well supported argument.
Goodwin is careful to keep her manufactured consensus in scare quotes (ie “manufactured consensus”), presumably because she doesn’t think it’s ‘manufactured’ (she describes this as her “highly speculative” assertion) in the sense of setting out to come to a pre-determined conclusion, but because it was the outcome of a process.
And on Lehrer’s guide, it seems he’s referring to the actual scientific process, which doesn’t apply well to the IPCC, as it doesn’t do science, it only reviews the available science. Whatever consensus there is, it exists in the literature, it’s not produced by the IPCC.
Michael,
It is governments that pay the IPCC and follow in many cases their opinion.
You have no idea how many times a politician has quoted that they are using what they paid for as an answer to what they are doing.
Yes, that’s why the US slavishly follows every dictum of the IPCC reports.
/sarcasm off.
> Goodwin is careful to keep her manufactured consensus in scare quotes (ie “manufactured consensus”), presumably because she doesn’t think it’s ‘manufactured’ (she describes this as her “highly speculative” assertion) in the sense of setting out to come to a pre-determined conclusion, but because it was the outcome of a process.
Indeed, as it has been discussed almost one year ago at Judy’s, Goodwin is studying the rhetorical design of the consensus, not the scientific basis of the consensus per se:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/11022898631
Obviously Judith doesn’t see it that way.
You guys still dont get Judith.
Thanks Steven.
Perhaps Mosphit could provide a quote that justifies:
> Goodwin (2011) argues that the IPCC consensus is a manufactured consensus, resulting from an intentional consensus building process.
willard, you continually buffalax everything I write. “You guys still dont get Judith” means that you dont get her. Maybe it means something different in your world, but to the rest of us, it means what it means. You dont get her.
make sure you close the ads and enjoy
I dunno willard, maybe she read the title of the article.
“The authority of the IPCC First Assessment Report and the
manufacture of consensus”
Goodwins “speculation” is not about the manufacture of consensus,
she says its her speculation that it was done as an appeal to authority.
Simply, Goodwin looks at the rhetorical design of the consensus, but it is manufactured. That is not in question. To be specific she speculates:
“The consensus claim thus seems to be primarily aimed at non-scientists, and in particular (I
assert, somewhat speculatively) constitutes an appeal to authority.
Note, this is not, as you claim, a speculative assertion about the fact of manufacture, but rather a speculation about the AIM or purpose of the manufacturing. And she’s right. Consensus gets used as an appeal to authority. walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. its a pig.
Dear Moshpit,
My question applied to the topic Michael raised. It also applies to a comment I did write here one year ago. I don’t believe I need to respond to your dismissive mind probing. As if it was the first time you tried to bully me like that.
The title of Goodwin’s article is not enough to justify that she was **arguing** that the IPCC consensus is a manufactured consensus, resulting from an intentional consensus building process. Any reader of her article can see that she **assumes** the “manufactured consensus,” and **describes** the rhetorical strategy that led to it. Insisting on the word “manufactured,” incidentally alluding the Manufacturing consent, only shows that we’re not into the pure epistemic mode, a mode where we’re supposed to limit ourselves if we’re not to taint our theories about the world.
Interestingly, the way you framed your answer to Michael hides those facts. These omissions walk and quack like your overall gaming strategies. Such lacks of self-awareness and objectivity deprive you from the openness needed to see how transparent your gamesmanship appears to anyone with some experience in argumentation theory.
That you believe this suffices to compromise the overall sincerity and integrity of my doodle sketching is beyond me. But I suppose there’s a market even for that.
Najdorf players know that they’re playing the Black pieces and they they’re in a reactive mode. They learn to respect the potential dynamics in their opponent’s game.
Dear Willard,
Clearly you don’t have a degree in ‘getting’ Judith.
Please see Mosher for all insights into the mind of Judith.
Mere mortals such as myself will have to continue to simply read the words, look at the references and see if they fit together reasonably, or not.
Very old school, but we all have to manage within our own limitations, as considerable as they may be.
willard.
You wrote:
“Goodwin is careful to keep her manufactured consensus in scare quotes (ie “manufactured consensus”), presumably because she doesn’t think it’s ‘manufactured’ (she describes this as her “highly speculative” assertion) in the sense of setting out to come to a pre-determined conclusion, but because it was the outcome of a process.”
You seem to be claiming that Goodwin describes the “manufacturing” as as speculative assertion. But Goodwin wrote
““The consensus claim thus seems to be primarily aimed at non-scientists, and in particular (I
assert, somewhat speculatively) constitutes an appeal to authority.”
That’s quite a different thing.
Maybe I dont get you or Goodwin. Perhaps you can explain. Maybe Judith doesnt get Goodwin. you might ask her to explain. Then you might get her. Maybe I would get her.
Now, I said that you guys dont get Judith. and you respond and Micheal responds not with an attempt to understand what Judith wrote, but rather with two non sequitors
1. A request that I explain Judith ( odd that )
2. A misreading of Goodwin’s speculation. (odder still)
The buffalax is funny, especially coming from you.
Let me try again.
you dont get Judith. Micheal doesnt get Judith. responding with a reading or misreading of Goodwin doesnt address that observation. Read that sentence again.
slowly. It means exactly what it means and nothing more. Note. it doesnt say anything about me. doesnt say anything about Goodwin or Judith’s reading of Goodwin. It says ” you dont get Judith”
To which you can respond; “yes mosh, I dontget Judith, she writes X, when Goodwin says Y”
Now, think about how you responded to a simple fact. You dont get Judith. Its true. You dont. Its neverending you know.
You might get this.
You keep saying we don’t “get” Judith. What is it exactly that we are missing?
Moshpit,
I’m not the one who said:
> Goodwin is careful to keep her manufactured consensus in scare quotes […]
That’s Michael who said that.
Michael can presume whatever he fancies.
It’s a free world.
Yes, that was mine and a mistake it was.
What’s not a mistake, is that Judiths “Goodwin (2011) argues that the IPCC consensus is a manufactured consensus, resulting from an intentional consensus building process” is not supported by Goodwin (2011) who has nothing to say about the scientific consensus.
I can see how one can err with this reference, but an error it is.
I was going to check more, because you really do need to check the references on a piece like this to have much meaningful input, but I haven’t made it past Lehrer and Goodwin, both of which seem questionable.
And what’s this psycho-babble about ‘getting Judith’?
I want to see the data on that.
I’ll clarify my correction a little further.
It’s the statement about the IPCC and its’ “appeal to authority” that Goodwin refers to as her “highly speculative” assertion, used by Judith as below;
“In this context, Goodwin (2011) argues that the IPCC consensus has been used as an appeal to authority in the representation of scientific results as the basis for urgent policy making.” – JC
Digging further into the references….more problems.
Koriat (2012).
Koriat, A. (2012). When are two heads better than one?. Science, (336), 360-362.
This is what Judith says;
“Recent research by Koriat (2012) provides insight into the group dynamics of consensual judgments by examining how well a confidence-based strategy works in groups. When most people did not know the correct answers, confidence-based group decisions were worse than those of even the worst-performing individual, because group decisions are dominated by the more confident member. An implication of Koriat’s research is that in uncertain environments, groups might make better decisions by relying on the guidance of those who express the most doubt.”
“When most people did not know the correct answers, confidence-based group decisions were worse than those of even the worst-performing individual,”
Logically impossible, but then this is not what the study reports, only that the group performs less well than the “better” performing individuals.
“An implication……”
Really??. There is nothing that even hints at this in the paper, especially given that it deals with simple tests of general knowledge and visual-perceptual tasks. There is no link, however remote, to “uncertain environments”.
This is that old favourite, the academic Kevin Bacon game – find a paper far removed from your own area, and try to make (or make up) a relevant link in as few hops, skips and jumps as possible.
Where is Team Skeptic when you need them? – this paper need a full audit of the references.
Michael,
Thank you for the expression “academic Kevin Bacon game”.
Speaking of which, you might be interested to know that Larry Laudan wrote a very influential piece entitled For Method or, Against Feyerabend,. Connecting the two epistemologies together might be tough.
I believe that this:
> Where is Team Skeptic when you need them? – this paper need a full audit of the references.
sums quite well my overall conclusion of what we can get from reading the thread, although an unreliable source tells me that Donna Laframboise might spend the week-end on the project.
***
This conclusion does not entail that we need to get Judy. If you were to try to get to Judy, I suggest you express yourself like Judy Parrish:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/13/no-consensus-on-consensus-part-ii/#comment-219843
or Mark Kantor:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/13/no-consensus-on-consensus-part-ii/#comment-219525
Sending her an email might even be better.
***
In any case, I never shown any interest in trying to “get” what Moshpit is trying to coatrack on this discussion. And I already said that my question was related to your comment. It was a way to include him in the exchange we were having, really.
That Moshpit still tries to insinuate that my question “responds” to his coatracking only shows how fake his parsomatics can be.
But I suppose there’s a market for that kind of fake comments.
Michael,
The paper of Koriat does not study interacting groups but only the relationship between correctness and confidence. The principal finding is that confidence correlates positively with correctness when most have the correct view, but negatively when most err. The most confident people appear to agree usually with the majority whether the majority has it right or wrong – and they do without any interaction with the others. Furthermore the result is obviously observed for very specific type of questions which have simple answers, not for anything complex like scientific results.
I agree with you that Judith’s formulation of the results is not in agreement with the contents of the paper. It tells that people err often in the same way and that in those cases the less confident may be those who are less likely to err. The problem is that this conclusion is based on knowing the right answer, not on analyzing information available when the result remains uncertain.
And not cherry-picked at all. IPCC authors reviewing their own work doesn’t imply bias at all..
People who phrase things in the most negative light possible, aren’t interested in a realistic discussion.
IPCC authors reviewing their own work is the plain reality (and not the only built-in corruption there).
Those who would seek to overlook such negative forces are the ones not interested in a realistic discussion.
You make it sound as though as single person makes the decision to include their own work.
There are layers of review and writing, involving many other people who must also agree that the work warrants inclusion.
This is nothing like what you imply.
Erica,
This seems to have become common and accepted practice in climate science. It’s a culture that seems to have become wide spread and accepted. This is an example posted in “The Australian” four days ago. It is behind a paywall so I hope I can post it here.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-panellist-gets-10m-in-grants/story-e6frg6xf-1226422922741
I see, so the IPCC position is now that the only person who can really understand a given paper, is the author. This explains why the IPCC appoints authors to review their own work. How terribly sensible.
Perhaps they should allow PhD students to award themselves their own doctorates? And its clear that my Masters thesis was undermarked because the examiners weren’t qualified to understand the subtlety of my argument…………..
Whether or not IPCC authors decide on their own to be reviewers of the own work, is beside the point. It remains an blatant and deliberate malpractice calculated to skew the science so as to line up behind the its politics.
And actually the situation is far worse than I first said. For this is far from being the only malpractice that is endemic in the IPCC, eg bad and worsening transparency, appointment of unqualified but ideologically ‘safe’ authors, refusal to discipline the abuses done under its auspices as revealed in Climategate, etc etc etc.
I’d love to hear a sensible alternative to having the science reveiwed by people who understand it………
Two thoughts:
1. Both Darwin and Einstein offered the potential for evidence that would prove them wrong. Darwin pointed out that if the Earth was not old enough, or that the mechanism of inheritance was not suitable, natural selection could not hold as the mechanism of biological evolution. Einstein offered three future tests that could falsify his proposal of relativity. Both explicitly offered their opponents the tools to falsify their own theories. And both did so out of purely scientific principle – there was no wider societal cost to their efforts. Is it too much to ask the same of climate science, when the resulting advocacy seeks to upturn the modern industrial civilization?
2. When the United States military carries out training exercises using their \’consensus\’ best practices, a \’red team\’ is used to challenge and test standard practices. Other organizations, such as the CIA and major laboratories carry out similar challenges to normal practice. The use of \’red teams\’ to challenge in-house groupthink is found in precisely the organizations in which failure has the greatest cost – in lives and effectiveness in existential challenges – winning or losing wars. Given the costs and planetary scope of the proposed actions to prevent climate change, a vigorous red team attack on the \’consensus\’ position within the scientific community seems warranted.
The ‘red team’ concept would be an excellent addition to the IPCC. It would also never ever ever be implemented by the IPCC.
Both Darwin and Einstein offered the potential for evidence that would prove them wrong. Darwin pointed out that if the Earth was not old enough, or that the mechanism of inheritance was not suitable, natural selection could not hold as the mechanism of biological evolution.
Darwin offered the opportunity for falsification (in the popperian sense) which Kelvin fortuitously supplied eg Nalimov (after Monod)
As to the second part of the paradigm, after the well-known work of
Karl Popper (1963, 1965; see also Chapter I), it has also become philosophically clear that the role of an experiment in science is limited: a hypothesis can never be experimentally supported. The only thing that can
be done is to show that the experiment does not contradict the hypothesis.
But the same experiment may prove consistent with some other hypothesis,
as yet unformulated, and a new experiment carried out to confirm
a new theory may become crucial for a hypothesis consistent with
previous experiments. Any hypothesis not refuted by an experiment remains open to further tests, and, according to Popper, here lies the
source of progress of natural sciences.
But if a hypothesis is refuted by an experiment, is it always rejected immediately and unconditionally? Above, in Chapter 1, I borrowed an example from Monod (1975) which described an awkward situation with
Darwin’s theory. Thomson (Lord Kelvin), the physicist, demonstrated by
means of exact calculations that solar energy could not suffice for the
evolution of life on the Earth. Darwin was depressed by these calculations.
A direct experiment-measurements of heat received by the Earth,
of the dimensions of the Sun, and of fuel caloricity-came to contradict
his theory. However, the latter was not rejected. Monod remarks that at
present we may state that Darwin’s evolutionary theory implicitly contained
the concept of solar nuclear energy though nobody could have had
such an idea at that time. Besides, adds Monod, Darwin’s theory also implied the concept of a discrete biological code, contrary to Lamarck, who
assumed the continuity of heritability.
To put it another way,in theoretical biology a number of faults in induction of so called physical (scaling) laws have been the consensus the so called Rubner rule (Rubner 1932)
The Rubner rule was even settled by a conference and a vote eg Dodds.
in the 1960s a Scottish conference on energy metabolism simply voted, 29-0, to enshrine 3/4 as the official exponent. Then, in 1997, an elegant, though controversial, paper by Geoffrey West and colleagues was published in Science that claimed to derive 3/4 from first principles, drawing on ideas about fractals in networks and the growing length of tubes.
http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=News&storyID=15927
That the consensus paradigm from a large number of researchers was also inconsistent with existing paradigms in Russian biological theory eg Bauer,and the Rubner constant,and that West invoked a second law violation eg Makarieva 2004.
Dodds 2010,resorted to a spherical cow to show that the consensus was mathematically wrong,and it has been admitted since and science moves on.The is not taken as some form of secular heresy by the practitioners of the field,unlike the CS community where the antropocentric projections of idola tribus are taken as challenges and invoke the doctrine of infallibility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Organum
Transposed Rubner for Kleiber in the first two paragraphs,
“Apart from the issue of the relative merits of the IPCC versus the NIPCC reports, the mere existence the NIPCC report and the list of 30,000 scientists disputing the findings of the IPCC raises the issue of whether a scientific consensus on climate change makes sense, given the disagreement, uncertainties and areas of ignorance.”
The mere existence of the NIPCC report and a list of 30,000 scientists only establishes disagreement. It doesn’t establish uncertainties and areas of ignorance.
The list of “30,000 scientists” is really a list of popular opinion dressed up as a list of scientists. Check the requirements for signing that list. A large number of the public have degrees but are not scientists. The list of “30,000 scientists” is swelled by defining degree holders who are not scientists as scientists. I would be eligable to sign the list. Apparently by background in computing gives me insight into climate models, which is complete nonsense.
Bear in mind that for any politically or religiously controversial scientific subject it’s easy to get many scientists that don’t actually work in the field in question plus many members of the public who have scientific degrees to sign lists and then present those lists to claim there is no consensus.
Does the existence of so many scientists on the following list mean there’s no consensus on the theory of evolution?
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
“Apparently by background in computing gives me insight into climate models, which is complete nonsense.” Then please cease and desist from your floods of postings of bumpf on the subject.
Thank you!.
Advancing “consensus” instead of evidence usually means the evidence isn’t very good.
Andrew
Bad,
It depends on what scientists ignore as evidence.
Just because a scientist is not a geologist or any other area of study does not mean he has an opinion on those findings IF he comes across on the research.
Opinion’s in science usually are bias to the funding to keep their research alive.
The funding is the key issue to what gets published and where governments are going with the “paid for” science.
“Advancing “consensus” instead of evidence usually means the evidence isn’t very good.”
Both evidence and consensus are advanced.
“Both evidence and consensus are advanced.”
And out of all the evidence that’s been advanced, which specific piece of evidence is the most convincing? You know, since ‘consensus’ is just people agreeing with each other’s beliefs and is not scientific.
Andrew
You are bad, Andrew. Badly informed. Consensus isn’t “people agreeing with each others beliefs.” Always at issue is what the data is telling us, and then a probability established that the data is telling us what we think it should be telling us. The recent announcement related to the Higgs Boson is a perfect example of this scientific consensus process. There would now be a consensus (among those qualified to judge the data) that the DATA show something acting an awful lot like a Higgs Boson at the right energy level has been confirmed at a very high level of probability. This is called scientific consensus, and has nothing to do with “people agreeing with other people’s beliefs.”
Next talking point Andrew. Maybe you could head over to John Daly’s site and find something…
Definition of CONSENSUS
1a : general agreement : unanimity b : the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned
2: group solidarity in sentiment and belief
duh
Andrew
What R.Gates is really telling us is that he and other Warmers live in a Wonderland where words mean what he wants them to mean.
Andrew
simon abingdon just expended about ten posts on tempterrain saying consensus was not unanimity, and you’re just killing him. Sure enough, when you look it up, one synonym is unanimity.
Yes you can look up lots of synonyms in dictionaries but you’d have to question lots of them.
If you look up ‘black’ you’l see that one suggestion is ‘clouded’ Are these really synonyms?
If you look up ‘white’ you’ll see ‘bloodless’
All English words have nuances of meaning. Meanings are not all black and white, or should I say clouded and bloodless?
But if Judith really thinks Unanimity and Consensus are synonymous she should say so.
This is outstanding! I was on board by the time I read, ” If, however, consensus is aimed at by the members of the reference group and arrived at by intent, it becomes conspiratorial and irrelevant to our intellectual concern.” I think this comment stream indicates that these conclusions are difficult to refute. Only a few thus far have defended purposeful consensus as a valid approach in science. The real irony in this whole situation is that the IPCC has managed to act in a manner that almost seems designed to increase public doubt. It has increased doubt, not just in the consensus positions on climate, but in the integrity of science in general, which is one of the major reasons many scientists in fields other than climate science have become interested in this issue.
Stephen,
Governments do not pay for “IF’s”, they want results for their money. Keeping a consensus insures questions are ignored and governments are happy with the results even IF they are biased and flawed.
Nonsense. Governments throw lots of money around and expect nothing in return except maybe some highly doctored summary report. We all could wish governments would be so efficient!.
I do not want an “IF” report from you..so you will not be getting any government grants.
Right now many dozens of people in the U.S. government are focused on planning for an ice free Arctic. From military strategy to resource development, this planning is one big huge “IF”. If the Arctic sea ice continues to melt, if warming continues, etc. Some may say this is a huge waste of tax dollars, to plan for such a future potential event…where’s the “consensus” Another very foolish thing the U.S. government is doing. Others would say it would be foolish not to be doing this planning.
The Skeptical Warmist (aka R. Gates),
Some points you a correct and others not…just depends on the research YOU have done to what I have done.
No grants or monies on my part…just pure curiosity to find answers that our current scientists consensus cannot provide.
A statement claimed or intended to be a candidate for consensual approval should have much more rigorous sourcing, validation, and testing than one proposed as a hypothesis by an individual or small group. To use the purported pre-existence of a consensus to dilute or avoid such requirements is a sure indicator of priority given to other-than-science goals and purposes.
Seems ter me that the crux of the consensus arguments above is that an *institutionalised consensus building process* brings into play ‘the invisible hand’ of confirmation bias by the majority and the marginalisation of critics, even attempts to exclude them from the process. A consensus mission is not a mission to eliminate error and seek to discover truth, its a mission to get everyone to agree This Lehrer (1975) quote is pertinent :
‘If.. consensus is aimed at by the members of the reference group and arrived at by intent, it becomes conspiratorial and irrelevant to our intellectual concern’
As Judith points out this does not mean that the IPCC conclusions are ‘necessarily incorrect,’ but, say, it sure makes them more likely to be incorrect than if the aim was critical, *critical* investigation of evidence for its own sake and fergit consensus.
This seems to me to strike at the heart of the ‘consensus’ debate:
“….consensus among a reference group of experts …….. is relevant only if agreement is not sought. If a consensus arises unsought in the search for truth and the avoidance of error, such consensus provides grounds which, though they may be overridden, suffice for concluding that conformity is reasonable and dissent is not. If, however, consensus is aimed at by the members of the reference group and arrived at by intent, it becomes conspiratorial and irrelevant to our intellectual concern.”
tomf0p
There can be intentional deception and unintentional ignorance.
But it is up to the individual to follow through or state it is just good enough and not follow science to the whole conclusion.
Most of current science is based on theory with very little based off of facts.
As a general editing point, you are an accomplished writer and you are aiming publication at a genre/context that is both by tradition and sometimes necessity wordy. Yet your paper seems overly long. Your point is fairly simple: Consensus has failed to provide a meaningful direction for CS and has perhaps itself become a contaminant. Your reference support is excellent for a paper of this length and would certainly not suffer from a shortening of the body.
Mentioned generally by others above is your conclusion which I take to be the most problematic element of your paper:
“It is time to abandon the concept of consensus in favor of open debate of the arguments themselves and discussion of a broad range of policy options that include bottom up approaches to decreasing vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events and developing technologies to expand energy access.”
Some specific criticism:
A) This might be a case of “false conclusion.” If consensus is abandoned, then what is the basis for doing anything? Yet, you implicitly assert the value of a bottom up approach without (in my mind at least) sufficient supporting detail. This renders it a bit “mom and apple pie.”
i.e.
1) Is there a structure for assessing the relative value of various bottom up approaches? The absence of any only invites the current political melee to reposition itself elsewhere.
2) “…decreasing vulnerability…” Perhaps defines a range of possibility/action so broad as to include the range between returning to caves and paving over the rain forest.
B) Based on the balance of your paper, you are arguing a case for the correct application of scientific method to CS (i.e. by asserting and documenting that consensus is not helpful) but you conclude with a proposal for action aimed at climate. The conclusion should limit itself to the context of it’s supporting argument. That is, a disciplined return to publication of method and results (both complete and transparent) followed by peer review, perhaps simultaneous independent repetition of the experiment or model followed by either acceptance or refutation. (Each represents a formal synthesis as a conclusion is reached which will in turn become a new thesis). It isn’t sexy and doesn’t attract funding but it is the hard, cold road necessary to advance understanding of physical reality. I think you actually do a fine (and in current social context unique) job of arguing for it, albeit at length. However, you subsequently abandon it as you cross the finish line.
Excellent review.
jbmckim,
You do have a very good grasp an what is currently in issue and that the current consensus failed to investigate itself when any new advances in science took place.
Just to hold onto the old theories for tradition does NOT advance science or our knowledge base.
Debate in new areas should be encouraged but it is not for the sake of protectionism.
I suggest that the point is that extreme weather and climate events will happen with or without any additional warming or cooling caused by mankind’s activities. Therefore, the proposal to decrease vulnerability to extreme weather is a “no regrets” option whatever the science says.
“At the same time, these uncertainties should not be regarded as a restriction on decision making.”
Gavin Schmidt could not have said it better himself.
Surely the exact opposite of this is true. Uncertainty should precisely be regarded as a restriction on decision making. And if the uncertainty is great enough, it should act as a bar, not just a restriction, on certain policies.
And this – “Science should be a tool for policy action rather than a tool for political advocacy (Dessai et al. 2009)” – is directly at odds with the history of the IPCC remarked in the article itself. The IPCC was not formed by scientists seeking to “speak science to power.” The IPCC was created, funded, and staffed at the highest levels by politicians to garner “scientific” support for their pre-existing policy goals.
The IPCC and the consensus are about power speaking to voters, to justify their assumption of more power. It is about silencing, or at the very least overwhelming the voices of, those who dissent from power.
As progressives gained political power, they shifted from “speaking truth to power” to “speaking propaganda to the powerless.”
” Uncertainty should precisely be regarded as a restriction on decision making.”
Hmm. I live in san francisco. It’s uncertain when the next big earthquake will hit. Nevertheless we have decisions made that take note of this uncertainty.
The uncertainty is not a restriction on decision making, the uncertainty drives the decision making. We act in certain ways because we are uncertain.
The notion that the epistemic status of a sentence ( certain to uncertain ) is necessarily tied to responsible decisions is uncertain at best. Sometimes we do things because we are certain and other times we do things because we are uncertain. In short, the epistemic status of a sentence doesn’t tell you on its face how it can or should be used.
Lukerwarmer~san, it maybe uncertain when the next one will hit, but it is certain to hit. Can’t say the same about climate sensitivity, can we.
Doesnt work either. we are certain the sun will go out, but that fact doesnt mean anything. what people are trying to do is read an action directly off the epistemic status of the sentence. What Im pointing out is that noting the epistemic status of a sentence tells you nothing about how that sentence can or should be used. Uncertainty doesnt imply action or inaction. Look I’m certain we have emmitted enough C02 to cook the planet, therefore we should do nothing. seize the day, the future is screwed. not really, but you get the idea.
my side ( AGW) has fallen into a trap. they thought that certainty would drive people to action. they thought they were fighting merchants of doubt. wrong.
But Merchant of Doubt was a stroke of genius! You could just pick your bogeyman and drive popular opinion straight down the fairway. Add a few linear no threshold models and you could have a 15 millirem Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years.
Steve, you say ” Sometimes we do things because we are certain and other times we do things because we are uncertain”. I was simply pointing out that your earthquake analogy was flawed on epistemological grounds. You are certain to experience and earthquake, you are simply uncertain about the scope ( although advances are being made here). Action, in the form of building mitigation practices are warranted. Can you point to something really big were we acted because we were uncertain?
” Can you point to something really big were we acted because we were uncertain?”
I would say almost every decision to go to war is rooted in uncertainty.
Take Iraq. We knew before the war that he had WMD, but our prime motivation was we were uncertain about what he would do with them.
When you press down into ANY decision you will find magically that there are things we are certain about and things we are uncertain about.
The Appeal to certainty or Uncertainty has nothing to do with the decision.
It has to do with selling the decision. That’s really my point. We are always and forever certain about somethings and uncertain about others. The stories we tell to convince others depend upon what works. Sometimes fear of certain death works, sometime uncertainty works.
I buy life insurance because I am certain I am going to die and uncertain about when. Is my action driven by my certainty or uncertainty? get it.
Steve, you say, ” I buy life insurance because I am certain I am going to die and uncertain about when. Is my action driven by my certainty or uncertainty? get it. ” One of us is exceptionally thick here Steve, and I think it might be you. What a bad example – yes you buy insurance because you are certain to die someday. What the hell does this have to do with the uncertainty, of climate sensitivity. Are you so sure about the extent of positive forcing, if so let’s see the link. Your examples are illogical and I don’t want to beat this horse any longer.
Someone has been reading Joshua’s comments too much. Semantics are boring. But…
My comment was in response to the statement in the main article “these uncertainties should not be regarded as a restriction on decision making.” Which was why I quoted it verbatim.
Now granted, I left “these” out of my own sentence, so you get a kewpie doll for effort. But my reference was with respect to the massive uncertainties inherent in CAGW.
But even taking your point at face value, I don’t know anyone who favors incurring the enormous costs of constructing buildings in California to withstand earthquakes because they are uncertain whether another earthquake will ever happen. It is the recent experience of the frequency and effects of earthquakes in the area that makes the expenditures palatable. It is perceived probability, not uncertainty, that drives those decision.
Now show me the last time there was a CAGW thermageddon, and we’ll talk.
“Surely the exact opposite of this is true.” ?
You’ve never seen this?
Termpterrain,
OMG. You must be joking promoting that nonsense. Just listen carefully to the spin. Note the bias in how he describes the consequences in the four boxes.
Don’t you question this sort of nonsense? Is advocating this rubbish what you call “science”?
I can’t believe you try to make out you should be trusted as an authority on science, yet you are so gullible as to swallow this nonsense without even questioning it.
Is this typical of the sort of message people should expect from SkepticalScience?
Answer: Yes.
Peter Lang,
Do you ever read your own comments? Look back at this one and have another try. This time include some reasoned arguments as to why you don’t like the argument. Why you think its spin. Why you think it’s nonsense. Why you say OMG. Why you think its rubbish.
Do you see what I’m getting at?
Tempterrain,
When someone swallows stuff like that, there is no point in trying to get through to them. That person (e.g. you) is gullible. Or more likely just wants to believe anything that fits his ideological beliefs.
Look at the difference between the way he describes the worst case scenario in cell 1A compared with cell 2B. Just listen to the emotion. Notice the down-playing tone for 1A and the scaremongering tone for 2B. Notice the length of time spent on scaremongering 2B. Notice all the extremist adjectives: “end of the world”, “catastrophe” etc etc etc. He goes on and on. This is provides an excellent example of the sort of nonsense you swallow hook, line and sinker – and you call it science! OMG!
I’d point out that the level of action implicit in column 1 is much higher cost than Nordhaus’s optimal policy and optimal carbon price. The cost has to be high enough to stop CO2 emissions rapidly. The cost of such a policy is huge. It would cause millions, perhaps tens of millions, of fatalities (like the ban on DDT caused, another loony-Left idea imposed on society without thinking it through properly).
The cost of applying the policy he advocates is guaranteed. 100% certainty. And for what reason? The reason is because he has a belief. He has a fear. But there is not a skerrick of evidence to support it.
That is not risk management. It is a spin-merchant attempting to confuse gullible people (who know nothing about formal risk management).
Don’t expect me to discuss this video any further. It is complete and utter rubbish.
Tempterrain,
You did not respond to my last comment. Having answered your question, I’d like to see your answer to your own question (you put to me):
More directly, do you now realise why that video is complete rubbish.
If you don’t why don’t you to turn it into a decision analysis and run the numbers.
That dude’s a clinic all to himself. Peter Martin, study him. Call me in the morning.
=========
Peter Lang,
Any short video clip will be open to the charge of oversimplicity which is the main objection I’ve heard. You must really wish the video itself were rubbish, then it wouldn’t have had the success it undoubtedly has had. You’re just jealous of that, I dare say.
So, what is the basic argument that you don’t like? It’s that there are many reasons for wanting to move away from fossil fuels which are unconnected with climate. Fossil fuels are finite. They’ll run out and we need to plan ahead anyway. They are often sourced in politically unstable regions of the world. They cause high levels of pollution in every major world city which are responsible for millions of deaths each year. So even if we have it wrong on the climate, there are plenty of other reasons for starting to make the switch now rather than leaving it until later. Fossil fuels can still be used but instead of all at once, they can be used over a longer period of time.
What’s so “loony left” about saying that?
You may disagree with that line of argument but, if so, you need to explain why. Anyone can use the phrase “complete and utter rubbish” about anything and everything. If that’s all you can say it shows a paucity of intellectual ability on your part.
Tempterrain,
So now you recognise it’s not about CAGW at all. It’s about a belief that the government and the Left should direct us how to get off fossil fuels for a whole stack of other Lefty beliefs. Is that a window into what the Left’s next scare campaign will be able, now that CAGW is dying rapidly.
Peter Lang,
You seem full of anger. Is that you consider the science of global warming to be a scam and left wing conspiracy against humanity?
If you think that, and produce a series of rants to try to justify this belief don’t you think its just a little offputting?
How can you expect to be taken seriously on the details of the argument?
Tempterrain,
You put up a really silly video. I explained to you in a way that I thought you would understand why it is simply extremist rubbish. Clearly you love it and you think the fact that thousands of people fall for it is a sign it is good.
You advocate this sort of nonsense on this web site and you haven’t the intergrity to admit it is total rubbish, and you have the hide to talk about me being taken seriously. Many of your comments have made me realise you little constructive to offer except to keep repeating your beliefs. This video, and your continuing advocacy of it have put to rest any lingering doubts I may have had about your integrity and ability to contribute anything worth reading.
Peter Lang,
Why don’t you say something useful instead of this continual meta-argument which you seem so keen on?
This guy is the sceptics best secret weapon.
Greg somebody – who went into public meltdown a while back?
Interestingly Pascal presented exactly the same argument as to why he should believe in a god.
You can argue why a course of action is correct, but , regardless of the merits of that argument, it can’t possibly be the same as why anyone should believe, or disbelieve, in anything.
Look up Pascal’s Wager.
So let’s look at the extremes.
But serious issue missing is time. And a time element is spending money now, and having disaster from it certain and timescale in less the decade.
And money spend is not in doubt because countries have already wasting more trillion already and what waste all this money has done nothing to prevent any future climate disasters.
So the point is we aren’t doing enough wasted who know how much, but at trillion dollar in total. And one could make the case that what was done has been a part of what is causing a world wide recession.
So the plan is to spend say at least 5 times more, and continue spending
this amount money for next century or more.
And with all that money wasted do very little as far as affect global CO2,
and quite possible to increase the amount of CO2 emitted had there none of wasted resources intended to solve the problem.
So we start wasting more money, resulting deaths because resources which may saved lives was used for this AGW crusade, and no reason to expect it actually does any good as defined as good by this crusade.
Another aspect related to time is history of damage already done from weather which has nothing to do with AGW. In last century probably well over 10 trillion dollars has been spent related to weather disasters.
And nothing alters in term of global climate, in the future for next 100 year we will probably spend as much 100 trillion dollars merely if weather is the same. And money squandered now, than there is less money spend on future weather disasters, simply we won’t the resources to spend on it. A poor nation spends far money on weather disasters, instead money spent, they pay in lives lost.
Next, related to time element is when can we expect these the of the world, 10 meter sea rise type apocalypses?
Well, it not extreme possibilities that it could occur in less than 50 years, it just impossible. The wildest ideas would not have any like a 10 meter rise in 50 year, not even 1 meter rise in 50 years.
Just because nuttier [which zero scientific knowledge, and are no better
prediction than from drug crazed lunatic] is we going to get 10 C rise in global temperature within a couple decade, it doesn’t mean we to include this kind of expectation in the future.
So no one who is sober thinks any serious in terms rising global temperature [+5 C] or +1 meter sea level rise will happen in less than 50 fifty years.
So, it seems there is no possible upside, if the solution is to increase taxes and add more regulation that restricts CO2 emission. There zero upside, just like there zero upside to becoming like Soviet Union.
But the is infinite downside.
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldenJackass/1342123200.php
But there is infinite downside.
So I am going simply grab some numbers relate to waste of money
on AGW. Things I count as most waste are things which should obviously seen as waste. Ethanol production is excellent example. Only dye in the wool true believer would argue this is not waste of money. A part of this perception is corporate welfare- this in itself isn’t real reason it’s waste of money. And only reason it’s continue is because of lobbyists and votes in key states. Ethanol has been subsidized forever. I it seems reasonable guess that when first suggested, proponents were suggesting the subsidies are needed to get it to point of being profitable. HA HA.
Another thing which a serious waste of money is Germany in their country that get very little solar energy, is spending money supporting
people buying solar power. It wouldn’t as much of waste of money if solar power was subsidized for areas which had 2 or 3 times more solar energy per square [not available anywhere in Germany]. So,
“Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies—totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University—to citizens to invest in solar energy.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2012/02
/why_germany_is_phasing_out_its_solar_power_subsidies_.html
So even the idiot bureaucrats and pols are realizing it is a waste of tax dollar for a country crazy on being “green”.
130 billion in total spent for homeowners for solar panels.
So a tiny part of the money that Germany has squandered solely due
to AGW
“In Germany, solar is by far the most inefficient technology among renewable energy sources, and yet it receives the most subsidies. Some 56 percent of all green energy subsidies go to solar systems, which produce only 21 percent of subsidized energy.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/solar-subsidy-sinkhole-re-evaluating-germany-s-blind-faith-in-the-sun-a-809439-2.html
This too:
“”From the standpoint of the climate, every solar system is a bad investment,” says Joachim Weimann, an environmental economist in the eastern German city of Magdeburg. Hans-Werner Sinn of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research calls solar energy a “waste of money at the expense of climate protection.”
So I could not find breakdown commerical solar power selling to grid and homeowner type solar panels. So anyhow at least 130 billion dollars plus money more money paid in future year for existing solar power. So 150 billion solar and say 100 billion for non solar.
1/4 of trillion dollars for these subsidizes for reducing CO2, which actually don’t reduce CO2 emissions. The total net is probably significant addition to CO2 emission if include CO2 cost of it’s production and maintenance. Wind is considered slight better, but we in no way including all costs- which is much more difficult and which is more debatable/contention but probably more than another 1/4 trillion in costs. Now Germany is the worst in terms utter waste in regard to solar panels. But America is far worst with it’s Ethanol subsidies.
“America’s corn farmers have been benefiting from annual federal subsidies of around $6 billion in recent years, all in the name of ethanol used as an additive for the nation’s vehicles.
That ends on Jan. 1, when the companies making ethanol will lose a tax credit of 46 cents per gallon, ”
“What the industry doesn’t want to see, however, is an end to a separate tax credit for ethanol made not from corn but non-foodstuffs like switchgrass, wood chips and even the leaves and stalks of corn.
Known as cellulosic ethanol, no one is selling it just yet due to its higher R&D and production costs. But the industry hopes to soon, and the production tax credit is up to $1.01 per gallon.”
And:
But there’s a nearer-term battle brewing over corn-based ethanol. A 2005 law requires that 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel be produced by 2012 — 6.25 billion gallons were produced in 2011. A 2007 revision gradually increases that to 36 billion gallons by 2022.”
So at 1.01 per gallon and 36 billion gallon, the plan is to spend even more tax dollar.
Same article what are saying now about corn-based ethanol now that there isn’t going money in it, and they want make more other subsidy:
“Corn ethanol is extremely dirty,” Michal Rosenoer, biofuels manager for Friends of the Earth, said in heralding the tax credit’s demise. “It leads to more climate pollution than conventional gasoline, and it causes deforestation as well as agricultural runoff that pollutes our water.”
and
“We will now also turn our attention to ending other federal policies that support dirty corn ethanol, including the Renewable Fuel Standard,” said Rosenoer.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/29/9804028-6-billion-a-year-ethanol-subsidy-dies-but-wait-theres-more?lite
Lesson keep lying and be a slippery moving target.
And:
Congress’ decision to end its 30-year-old ethanol subsidy could boost gas prices as early as next week, according to USA Today. That’s because virtually all retail gasoline sold in the U.S. contains at least 10% corn ethanol.
The end of the subsidy portends an increase in manufacturing costs. Ethanol blenders get a 45-cents-a-gallon tax credit, according to USA Today. When the credit ends Sunday, those costs will most likely be transferred to the consumer at about 4.5 cents per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline, which typically contains a 10% ethanol blend called E10″
Since it’s law that must in gasoline one has consumers paying the additional cost. 6 billion time 30 is 180 billion. With plans to pay twice as much for non-corn based Ethanol. And we have govt forcing us to buy it, and increasing gasoline costs. And if we spent 5 billion 20 years ago, in today’s dollars that is more than 6 billion dollars.
So keep in mind that 180 billion dollars spent of something “dirty”
and causes more CO2 emission. Easily for numerous ways to count it.
And they spend more than twice this amount in future.Which when that is ended, they will call “dirty” and inefficient in terms adding more CO2 emissions.
Temp, Greg Craven? Have you misplaced your meds again?
That guy should not be allowed within ten miles of any classroom.
Logic fail #1: he incredibly assumes that the hugely negative effects listed in 1A will magically disappear in 2A
Logic fail #2: he equally incredibly assumes that taking action will prevent the 2B scenario from happening – when, by all reasonable estimates, any action we can take will merely postpone the worst case for a few years.
And if we fail to prevent it from happening then we won’t have any money left for adaptation.
Dr Curry, about this quote from Oreskes: If there is no consensus of experts—as was the case among earth scientists about moving continents before the late 1960s—then we have a case for more research. If there is a consensus of experts—as there is today over the reality of anthropogenic climate change —then we have a case for moving forward with relevant action.”
Point out that there was a consensus among physicists about moving continents before the late 1960s: the consensus was that it could not possibly have occurred because there was no energy source sufficient to move the continents. That consensus was wrong. That consensus asserted that something that had not been found and studied did not exist. That consensus has a parallel in the climate science consensus that the the sun can not be exerting more influence than is accounted for in the climate models because a sufficient mechanism is not known. To assert that “what is not known to exist” in fact “does not exist” is a perversion of Occam’s razor: to assume something is absent is as big an error as to assume that something is present.
fwiw, I like the essay.
No energy source sufficient to move, haha, that sounds familiar.
Edim,
We currently think as energy being a single source when in actual fact comes in many different forms.
From our forefathers I would hazzard the guess…
Dr Curry: We have personally encountered this effect numerous times in our interaction with colleagues that support the IPCC consensus.
This would be helped out by an example of an “interaction”. I actually do not understand the sentence that precedes that quote.
I don’t want to cite specific examples of this to protect the guilty, I am thinking of a recent example where several colleagues suggested we not publish a paper since it would provide fodder for the AGW skeptics
I thought that might be your reply. I can’t disagree. However, you could add “for example, several colleagues recently suggested that we not publish a paper since it would provide fodder for the AGW skeptics.”
I think that protects the guilty and innocent alike, clarifies the preceding (which I didn’t understand), and you already wrote it publicly.
I will probably remove this sentence from the paper, and somehow clarify the preceding sentence
That will work.
This is the worst kind of unsupported innuendo. As the saying goes, either put up or shut up.
You ‘teach’ people here to question statements that are not supported by evidence yet you feel free to trot out this sort of crap.
Why don’t you just rename the whole site WTFIUWT or Heartland II?
Earlier I asked whether you genuinly believe that the NIPCC report was in any way in the same league as the reports published by the IPCC. I think I can guess your answer.
If I were one of your students, I’d be demanding my college fees back.
I shan’t be visiting here again.
Knee to spine to foot. My, what nerve that Louise has, but oh, how stricken!
========
AKA, Judy, when you’re over the target.
=======
“I shan’t be visiting here again.”
Bye! Close the door quietly as you leave
Smear smear, smear smear, oh what a joy it is.
You can’t blame the leopard for not changing its’ spots…….
Dr Curry: Curry (2011) argues for a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify better ways of framing the climate change problem, explore and characterize uncertainty,
should be
Curry (2011) argues that …
or some other rephrasing if you want to keep “argues for”.
As a comment or two on the paper…
It would be worthwhile to explicitly point out that Oreske urges consensus at the expense of ignoring uncertainty. When the amount of uncertainty is unknown, one can not assume that the distribution of outcomes is Bayesian. It might be Poissonian. Practically speaking, that makes the distribution’s tail more likely than is assumed.
Let me suggest that you expand on the policy choices section well. You rightfully point out the approach minimizing failures; I hope you will also consider the approach of maximizing positive impacts. For example, modest tax incentives for improving efficiency in the US might well have more positive impacts than anything else we could do as a nation re trying to curb the growth of ghg’s (IMO). And yet this option is virtually ignored by the IPCC et al.
I think this will be an excellent addition to the literature informing the public discourse.
Matt wrote: “point out that there was a consensus among physicists about moving continents before the late 1960s: the consensus was that it could not possibly have occurred because there was no energy source sufficient to move the continents. That consensus was wrong. ”
This is a terrific example of consensus thinking. An 8 year old child could look at the map of the world and see how nicely the continents fit together. Much easier to assume…. what? Some sort of crazy coincidence than simply to admit they might be wrong?
Louise, in high dudgeon, writes: “Earlier I asked whether you genuinly believe that the NIPCC report was in any way in the same league as the reports published by the IPCC. I think I can guess your answer.”
I don’t get why you’re so angry, Are you really still holding the IPCC up as representing some sort of high standard? if so, you’ve not been paying attention Louise. Nor do I see any sort of innuendo. I think Judith as quite clear.
J.C. writes: “In summary, the manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public’s trust in the IPCC and the consensus building process.”
@pokerguy
No point. Louise left this blog, promising never to return, today at 2:09.
No doubt she keeps her word.
Louise, we hardly knew ye…
JC writes: “In summary, the manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science”
Even if you accept this summary, you must also accept that the NIPCC report had the intended consequence of distorting the science. For example, removing error ranges from the Hockey Stick and expressing overly confident but imprecise statements about the temperature record.
“For example, removing error ranges from the Hockey Stick and expressing overly confident but imprecise statements about the temperature record.”
I don’t remember what stated error bars were, since you making this point, what is the error range for hockey stick?
And how many versions are these days, is spaghetti one still considered current, And how does have error range on such a chart?
Top google image search gives the version of the hockey stick with the uncertainty ranges in grey.
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/Manns-hockey-stick.gif
One of the criticisms of the Hockey Stick is that it under-estimated the uncertainties. One way of over-emphasising this criticism is to present the plot without *any* uncertainties at all.
However, there’s no uncertainties for the spliced ‘data from thermometers’ (red) in that graph. This is BEST:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best-upper/plot/best-lower/plot/best
How do you splice uncertainties?
Edim,
You are wrong! You really have to check these things if you are pretending to be knowledgeable when casting aspersions.
Your incorrect challenge is a distraction from the relevant point that the NIPCC removed the uncertainty ranges from the original because it is an unscientific document.
Let’s contrast with what a proper scientist does when writing a proper scientific document. Here’s the relevant part of the “Hockey Stick diagram” caption from the AR3 Summary for Policy Makers:
(a) The Earth’s surface temperature is shown year by year (red bars) and approximately decade by decade (black line, a filtered annual curve suppressing fluctuations below near decadal
time-scales). There are uncertainties in the annual data (thin black whisker bars represent the 95% confidence range) due to data gaps, random instrumental errors and uncertainties, uncertainties in bias corrections in the ocean surface temperature data and also in adjustments for urbanisation over the land.
Go to the following and click on “The Scientific Basis” and then on “Summary for Policy Makers”.
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/
The Muller range appears larger because it is clearly at a finer than annual resolution. If you annualised the data I expect it would be relatively consistent with the unresolveable error ranges of the Hockey Stick plot.
Steve,
What am I wrong about? I said there are no uncertainties for the spliced thermometer data in the graph you posted. Then I posted the BEST plot with the uncertainties, just for comparison. That’s all. I am not claiming anything.
Here the 120-month means:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best-upper/mean:120/plot/best-lower/mean:120/plot/best/mean:120
Edim,
What am I wrong about? I said there are no uncertainties for the spliced thermometer data in the graph you posted.
In the SPM you can see that the annualised uncertainty ranges of the expanded obs data are around 0.15C so they would not show up in the Hockey Stick diagram because of the compressed scale. In the caption, it additionally states:
These [proxy-based] uncertainties increase in more distant times and are always much larger than in the instrumental record due to the use of relatively sparse proxy data.
I don’t really think they could have been more clear.
Note, calculating a 120 month mean of the 95% range values for daily or monthly data will not give you the 95% range of the 120 month temperature mean!
It’s not unique to climate science that current research is reviewed in review articles or that monographs are written to present the current state of science more comprehensively. That kind of activities are usually not considered as bad for the development of science. it’s certainly common that they speed up finding errors in the papers these reviews discuss. Is the case of IPCC really different and if it is then why?
On this site the general view is that IPCC is, indeed, different. Even people who are rather close to the main stream thinking have written along those lines (and that includes also myself). But how true is that actually? Do we have good evidence for that? Are the overstatements on the certainty of the severity of the problems really do to IPCC or would they be just as bad (or even worse) without?
The problem that I have seen with IPCC is that it tells too openly what is the “right view on climate change”. Telling that openly may influence part of the scientists and make them conform to the perceived consensus, but is this true or just illusion?
With IPCC or without the issue of climate change is highly politicized. The IPCC is a natural target for the opponents but that does not prove that the views of the opponents are correct. That an organization like IPCC might have negative influence on science makes sense, but does it really have that effect? Is there some real comparative evidence on that?
Pekka It think it’s pretty clear the IPCC is not even remotely objective in its approach. It is after all a politiical organization, with an inherent bias favoring increased politicization of the world. At heart it is a political advocacy organization masquerading as a scientific one, the nefarious yet still unpunished activities of a number of its leading lights clearly revealed in Climategate.
So while its “reviews” may or may not be harming climate science itself, its skewed outlook is certainly threatening harm to the general public by urging unwarranted political action.
“With IPCC or without the issue of climate change is highly politicized.”
Yes Pekka, it is. And what would you expect when leading warmists who know damn well there are legitimate questions regarding their precious hypothesis, not only refuse to engage with those who would question them, they dismiss them as “deniers,” and “denialists”, and “idiots” (A. Lacis,) and “morons.” Do skeptics engage in such name calling, yes. I do it myself fro time to time. But the more important question is do leading skeptics do so? IN other words, is the blame for the current state of politicization o be shared equally.
The answer insofar as I can determine is an emphatic “no.”
I might not agree who is most guilty or how the politicization got the form and extent it now has. I do, however, agree that scientists should present their views differently from what some of them do. If they take shortcuts to make their message stronger they face two issues:
– They err sometimes in a way that at least looks bad.
– They lose the status that a scientist might have – and they influence also the status of other scientists.
It’s pretty obvious that both sides felt sincerely that they were mistreated by the other side already at rather early stages of the controversy. That led to a choice of operation that was perhaps not acceptable from the side of several skeptics but that was even less acceptable for scientists.
The most important reason for the politicization is, however, perfectly legitimate. Deciding what is good climate policy is inherently very difficult and any difficult issue with potentially high stakes is rightfully politicized.
Pekka,
Where does influence fit in?
There is bias and following bad parameters but the influence is off the individual person in a stream of followers…
The norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, offered, in a little textbook upon the topic of logic, (the first meeting with this word forty years ago) an interpretation of the term consensus that was quite different from the way it is used by the IPCC. The term is originally connected to democratical processes. His description was something like “the agreement upon the legitimacy of not having to agree”.
Quite another view.
Certainly not the current consensus view.
But they hold us to be in trust while they are allowed to do whatever they want.
Anyone outside the consensus is scorned…even though their science is very sound!
You have your own mind and opinion which can only be persuaded by your own interest…if scientists try influencing, then RED flags spring up that something is NOT quite right.
In the UN system consensus means what no party vetos.
:-) or propaganda pumped to alter your own opinion!
lolwot has highlighted the weakest comment in your paper:
“Apart from the issue of the relative merits of the IPCC versus the NIPCC reports, the mere existence the NIPCC report and the list of 30,000 scientists disputing the findings of the IPCC raises the issue of whether a scientific consensus on climate change makes sense, given the disagreement, uncertainties and areas of ignorance.”
His example on evolution highlights the weakness well. No serious biological scientist doubts that there is a consensus on evolution and generally analysis that avoids considering biological science from an evolutionary standpoint is substantially weaker for it.
This number of dissenters is an even more fallacious example along the same tenor of what you say is wrong with the IPCC approach. What is the transparency of how these 30,000 are credentialed, vetted, and recruited? I heartily doubt that you have the time to check out the credentials of the 30,000 or know anything at all about more than a double-handful of them. Aside from the general issues on designed consensus, under your own approach, to give a weight to dissent would have to be based on the quality of it, rather than the numbers.
I have rewritten that part of the text:
Consensus has both cognitive (evidenced based) and social dimensions (peer acceptance), including shared beliefs and uniform interpretations. Funtowicz and Ravetz (1990) propose a coding system for colleague consensus:
__________________________________________________
Code Peer acceptance Colleague consensus
4 Total All but cranks
3 High All but rebels
2 Medium Competing schools
1 Low Embryonic field
0 None No opinion
The idea of a scientific consensus surrounding climate change has been rejected by a number of people, including both scientists and politicians. Notably, the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has written a report entitled Climate Change Reconsidered [13], that relatives or contradicts the main conclusions of the IPCC; it has been argued that this report should be understood as a form of counter-expertise [14]. Much effort has been undertaken by those that support the IPCC consensus to discredit skeptical voices including the NIPCC, essentially dismissing them as cranks or at best rebels, or even politically motivated ‘deniers’ [15].
Apart from the issue of the relative merits of the IPCC versus the NIPCC reports, the mere existence of the NIPCC report raises the issue of whether a scientific consensus on climate change makes sense, given the disagreement reflected by the NIPCC report and the uncertainties that are acknowledged by the IPCC. As students of science, we are taught to reject ad populam or ‘bandwagon’ appeals; this sentiment is articulated by the motto of the UK Royal Society: ‘nullius in verba’, which is roughly translated as ‘take nobody’s word for it’.
Since I commented above on the sentence about criticisms of the NIPCC, what is reference 15.
I still don’t think it is justifiable to imply that criticisms of the NIPCC report are motivated by defence of the so-called IPCC consensus, when it is already agreed that there is no consensus on what consensus means.
A reasonable motivation for a scientist objecting to the NIPCC report is that it distorts the science in the individual area where the scientist works or is knowledgeable.
Scientists have criticised the IPCC report where they feel its processes have not properly reflected the science. They’ve done this both in a very public way (eg. the hurricanes issue) and they’ve done it in a more measured way eg. those that criticised the way that sea level rise projections were under-played by separating out the glacier dynamics element. So the criticism (for science reasons) can and does go both ways.
Susan, ” No serious biological scientist doubts that there is a consensus on evolution and generally analysis that avoids considering biological science from an evolutionary standpoint is substantially weaker for it.”
A person can believe or not believe one particular theory and it not have any impact on their belief or lack of belief in another. People can be scientists without going out of their way to prove that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist to every 5 year old they happen to meet. It is even possible that someone can be a scientist without believing that government is the solution to all problems, that all skeptics are funded by big oil or tobacco, or that climate sensitivity is linear.
Which is really more frightening, someone that believes in intelligent design or a benevolent, incorruptible one world government :)
Captdallas,
” No serious biological scientist doubts that there is a consensus on evolution… ”
Is this is true? The creationists have their own list of “thousands of scientists who think…….. etc etc” There is even this curious case of Dr. Marcus Ross, a fully qualified paleontologist with a PhD in the subject, but also a “young earth creationist” — who believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/science/12geologist.html?pagewanted=all
Does Dr. Ross think there is a consensus?
Temp, “is this true..? Sure, there are people that believe in a benevolent, incorruptible one world government that still can do science :) And others that can rationalize a way to still have religious beliefs and do science. Remember the predominately religious courts dropped the scientific heretic thing or there would be no science.
As for the world being only 10,000 years old, there is a issue with taking things too literally, like sensitivity range of 1.5 to 4.5, that basically assumes the world is about 10,000 years old :)
The Trouble With Lolwot:
Here’s an improvement.
While it’s arguable that nobody who is serious doubts evolution occurs, what IS up for question are claims which claim to offer an example of it without sufficient evidence.
That situation is much more alike to the climate debate.
See the Italian Wall Lizard amazingest fastest EVAH ! evolution
It may not involve genetic change. “Not evolution at all”, is another reasonable scientific position
To claim certainty of either is incorrect without documentation of genetic change.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm
4 years after announcing it, still nothing showing up with decent evidence
Curry (2011) argues for a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify better ways of framing the climate change problem, explore and characterize uncertainty, reason about uncertainty in the context of evidence-based logical hierarchies, and eliminate bias from the consensus building process itself.
or
Curry (2011) argues for a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify better ways of framing the climate change problem, explore and characterize uncertainty, reason about uncertainty in the context of evidence-based logical hierarchies, and eliminate bias from the consensus building process itself.
Curry (2011) argues for a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify better ways of framing the climate change problem, explore and characterize uncertainty, reason about uncertainty in the context of evidence-based logical hierarchies, and eliminate bias from the consensus building process itself.
Okay – I could not get
strikethroughto work.But I suggest eithyer the word “for” or the words “Is needed” should be removed.
Ways Forward:
Those of you who follow the Evidence Based Medicine movement will know what the Cochrane Reviews are. The Cochrane Collaboration describes themselves this way:
[[ http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews/ ]]
“Cochrane Reviews are systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy, and are internationally recognised as the highest standard in evidence-based health care. They investigate the effects of interventions for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. They also assess the accuracy of a diagnostic test for a given condition in a specific patient group and setting. They are published online in The Cochrane Library.
Each systematic review addresses a clearly formulated question; for example: Can antibiotics help in alleviating the symptoms of a sore throat? All the existing primary research on a topic that meets certain criteria is searched for and collated, and then assessed using stringent guidelines, to establish whether or not there is conclusive evidence about a specific treatment. The reviews are updated regularly, ensuring that treatment decisions can be based on the most up-to-date and reliable evidence.”
These reviews allow doctors to simply look up an issue — like ‘ginseng to improve cognitive performance’ and find out, after all the dueling reports and claims on the TV news and in the popular press, if there is any REAL evidence of effectiveness [[ read the resulting abstract at: ttp://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007769/no-convincing-evidence-of-a-cognitive-enhancing-effect-of-panax-ginseng. ]]
I would suggest that one possible way forward is to establish an independent, cross-discipline CliSci version of the Cochrane Collaboration, which would perform Cochrane-style reviews on specific subjects, giving us a clear understanding of ‘what we know’, ‘what we don’t yet know’, and what areas offer justification for further investigation. This is a much better system than see-sawing dueling papers that never resolve scientific issues in any common-sense manner.
I know, the IPCC was supposed to do something like this, but has failed, for all the reasons already well known.
well, realistically the Cochrane collaboration is a political machine not much better than the IPCC for attracting funding to look at other people’s research. Nothing much new or innovative ever comes out of a Cochrane review, excepting that there aren’t enough randomised controlled trials. The cochrane approach to EBM won’t result in major advances in knowledge and is more likely to suck resources away from proper primary research.
and should anyone dare to say too many randomised controlled trials are a waste of economic scarce resources….denier!
bloius79 — Perhaps you misunderstand…the Cochrane Reviews (and the process) is not intended to produce anything ‘new or innovative’ and is not intended to ‘result in major advances in knowledge’ — it is meant to review what has been reliably learned about various treatments and other medical topics — it answers the question “What is our current state of knowledge about topic x”.
I can’t say I agree at all with your statement “and is more likely to suck resources away from proper primary research.”. These reviews are not horrifically time consuming nor do they consume primary research resources. The are review studies. They look carefully at studies already done, evaluate which are more likely to have reliable results, and attempt to pool the results into a dependable statement of our knowledge on the treatment. In addition, they point up which treatments have probably been shown simply not to be effective and which would probably be a waste of time to investigate further and differentiate which treatments seem to have at least supporting evidence or for which the science shows some biological plausibility and recommend further research is needed or might produce results.
This process can save research dollars by making it unnecessary to spend research time and money on something that has already been well proved effective or on something that has been sufficiently thoroughly studied to be able to say “this is not effective and further study is unlikely to change this evidence”.
Health care dollars are saved by allowing practicing medicos to avoid worthless, unproven treatments. Don’t you wish your doctor recommended only treatments that were verifiably known to actually work?
For CliSci, independent review by a panel of cross-discipline experts would allow them to weed out the weak and methodologically poor studies, pool results of strong disciplined studies, and make determinations of what bits are truly reliably ‘settled’ and what needs more research.
Kip Hansen
You conclude:
An ” independent review by a panel of cross-discipline experts”, as you suggest makes sense in order to circumvent the “consensus process” and the politically-motivated agenda-driven “science”, which it promulgates.
But I believe we have gone too far with IPCC for this alone to be an effective solution.
I believe IPCC as it is now structured must be eliminated and replaced by this independent “panel of cross-discipline experts “, which you propose.
Max
IPCC is supposed to be such a panel. It has some government overview, but that’s supposed to influence directly only the SPM.
IPCC is not perfect as an independent panel, but what is the better way of creating such a independent panel. Who sets it up, who gives it guidelines – What makes it both exist and independent?
Max, according to Paltridge, there is too much weight (people, funding, papers, bodies, politicians, journalists, environmentalists, economists, etc) behind the current warming consensus for change to come from within. I think it will take a scientifc revolution which starts with the basic science of the IR absorbing/emitting gases to overturn the ‘load-of-nosense” theory named but not yet ascribed to by Paltridge.
Max — Yes, I agree, the IPCC is broken — possibly manufactured broken from the first.
How to put together a new independent body is of course a difficult undertaking — but if medicine can make a stab at it, so can CliSci.
What we have now are dueling factions publishing contradictory papers, each claiming that the papers of the other side (well, some topics have more than two sides) are weak, poorly done, use inappropriate statistical methods, on and on. What to accept as our current state of knowledge becomes truly a matter of opinion. No one ever retracts a paper, no matter how many times it is shown to have been in error. No papers are ever rewritten with major corrections. Like doctors, we are left to try and figure out which of the ‘sixteen most recent papers’ on radiative transfer rates may be the most correct.
The IPCC apparently decides in advance by committee of pals what the correct answers are, then sifts the literature until it finds some papers to cite in support of it. That’s no way to run whole field of science.
I am not a professional scientist, not a professional climatologist: my field is religion and ethics. I have put together committees, with some success, to straighten out organizations rife with corruption. It is possible. While the climate system itself might be a wicked problem, or even a wicked mess, CliSci is just screwed up and can be fixed.
“What makes it both exist and independent?” – PP
Being the cynical old bastard that I am, I suspect they will find it “independent” when it produces results they agree with.
“The IPCC apparently decides in advance by committee of pals what the correct answers are, then sifts the literature until it finds some papers to cite in support of it” – Kip
This sort of conspiratorial thinking doesn’t do much to instill confidence in the author.
On the issue of a Cochrane style approach (which I agree with) I don’t think they’d come up with anything radically different from the IPCC conclusions. Though it might do the skeptics a world of good to read the summary of the studies that claim all observed warming is ‘natural’, which would go something like this; ‘a small number of studies of poor quality….’.
Michael — I hope this appears succeeding yours, but I’m never sure how this nesting works here. My flip comment on the IPCC “apparently decides in advance by committee of pals” is not really suggesting conspiracy by rather refers to their necessity of maintaining the consensus position that they have already taken, the control of each chapter by a small cadre of co-authors and their obvious attempts and success of ‘keeping out’ dissenting views or findings. None of these views is particularly controversial — they just are what they are, and are part and parcel of the problems with the IPCC.
The summary by about a dozen, and your cadres total only around fifty. Not much need to breathe together in such a crowded room.
=====================
Well, I’m nobody. I’ve been larking around this site for a couple of months now. I have to say this site has reached new low though I admit i know alomost nothing about this warming stuff. My point is that if this site was by nobody like me in blogsphere I’d understand but … by a scientist, climate scientist?
My personal feeling is I have no idea that what you guys/sceptics are talking about or a reason of this site. There is absolutly no consensus among sceptics here. It’s all oever the place and it’s always the same no matter what subject matter is. Only consensus is “AGW is a hoax.”, not even it’s CAGW because some don’t believe AGW. It seems everything goes as long as one says “AGW is a hoax.”. There is no direction or modelation by anybody. I mean it in scientific terms. It’s like kids playing in a sandbox.
I don’t know science but I thought that don’t you have to build, progress upon premises or facts or data or hypothese you agree on? There is abusolutely no progress in discussion and nobody cares.
There are still somebody who don’t believe in the science of greenhouse gas effect. Why the heck ghost of SkyDragon is still here? I’d understand it if this site was run by nobody like me as I said before but …
WTF?
Don’t you have to separate science and politics or philosophy or ideology when you discuss science? And why nobody challenge anybody’s basic science as long as he says “AGW is a hoax”? Where is your peer review on basic science ?
What I mean is that peer review goes both ways? SkyDragon should be a proper counter argument to AGW? You were talking about grey materials before in different thread but you’ve never cared about grey arguments as long as he says “AGW is a hoax”. And you guys go off to politics or ideology/libertalianism or philosophy when your scientific discussion goes a little fuzy. WTF?
Don’t you have to have sciece discussion without politics before you have a political and economic discussion?
I have a suggestion for your next subject for your discussion.
No consensus on consensus?
Half of the US population don’t believe in Evolution and belive in inteligent design. Half of the US regislatures don’t believe in Evolution and believe in Inteligent design. No consensus on consensus?
There are so many natural things we still can’t explain, uncertaintity. It seems there still so many miracles happening scientists can’t explain around the world, another uncertaintity. 15% of scientists in our highest scientific instition still beleive in God. So the question is do we let politics decide if we teach Inteligent design in biology class? Because there are so many uncertaintities and there is no consensu on consensus?
(I know it’s not the same, apples & oranges.) Sorry to bother you, bye.
“I don’t know science but I thought that don’t you have to build, progress upon premises or facts or data or hypothese you agree on? There is abusolutely no progress in discussion and nobody cares.
There are still somebody who don’t believe in the science of greenhouse gas effect. Why the heck ghost of SkyDragon is still here? I’d understand it if this site was run by nobody like me as I said before but …
WTF?”
There seems to me to be progress or movement. But it seems you want some clue as to what people can agree on. And science generally focuses on disagreement. Though science is advanced by observation and tests, so this about science rather than being science.
But I think it might interesting to find out what people agree about.
It seems everyone can agree that we are currently in long period of warming- this is called the interglacial period. Going further back in time
to last tens of million of years, we are in cool period, or broadly we are in an Ice Age. This Ice Age can characterized as growth of glaciers and recession of glaciers and polar caps. Or having polar caps equals Ice Age.
The oldest ice found at Antarctic is about 2 million years old- so have not completely left the Ice Age even briefly for couple million years. But there lots of periods called interglacial periods [or period in between glacial periods] which glaciers have retreated significantly.
Much concern about global warming is a sudden [meaning less than century] melting of glacier and polar ice caps. Or rapid rise in sea level.
Another concern is about changing conditions related to warming causing what are called extreme weather events.
Thank you, CRV9:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/27229972128
It’s a really bad chingrish or singrish effort.
You have to look for the mixture of native english competence
( getting idiomatic expressions right ) and see that in contrast to the
faked incomptence. In short, a person who makes mistake X, would
never get idioms right. First you have to figure out what they are trying to fake. You can get a sense by looking at the spelling mistakes.
Unusual or uncommon spelling mistakes.
Spelling mistakes one usually sees come down to two varieties: keyboard mistakes and phonetic spellings or things like letters transposed or left out. When people try to fake spelling mistakes it’s pretty simple to spot. Note the attempts to fake asian r and l problems.
That is, they are making the spelling mistakes that they think an asian person would make by subsitution “r” for “l” and “l” for “r”. However, they are inconsistent in this when they wrote the second post and forgot how they misspelled libertarianism. Anyway, here are the odd mispellings from the first post. basically a mishmash of spelling mistakes no one makes along with a few that look like bad attempts at chingrish.
larking
alomost
oever
modelation
abusolutely
libertalianism
regislatures
grooms
##
uncommon grammatical errors: leaving out articles and screwing
up prepositions. This is something non native speakers
do. When you see these mistakes you are usually dealing with a non native speaker or somebody faking non native
“by nobody like me in blogsphere”
“about or a reason of this site”
“what subject matter”
“And why nobody challenge”
The problem is that if somebodies english is this bad that they get prepositions wrong and leave articles out, the problem is pervasive. Its not spotty like in this text. The other thing is that if they make these kind of mistakes they dont have a grasp of idiomatic english. In short, they dont make enough of these types of errors and they make the wrong ones for a faked asian
Later in the second post they introduce a new error. One in tense.
“I didn’t meant to”
Thats funny. a better fake would be “I didn’t meaned to”
But they know the tense they are in as they continue
“I didn’t meant to, but I guess I’ve offended many.
I’m uneducated nobody. I’ve never practiced or
learned any formal writting or making an argument formats.
It was a spare of moment thing. ”
Typically tense errors would be getting the irregular form wrong. But getting the form correct and then mixing tenses in sentences is something a faker tries.
And again with the uncommon spelling mistake. “spare” of the moment
isnt a mistyped word. It isnt a misheard word and it isnt a phonetic
misspelling. It’s a fake mispelling.
And now they introduce some plurization errors another tense error, but they get those
wrong as well.
” I was kind of expected that kind of technical, scientific talks more,
but of course without politics and ideology talks.”
In their attempts to sound asian ( replacing
“l” for “r” in libertarianism.. they forget that asian speakers
DROP the plural indications: An asian might write
“ten job” because in asian languages the plural indication given by
“ten” and doesnt have to be duplicated on the noun. In english we signal the pural with “ten” and with a marker on the noun.
And then they forget to fake the asian phoentic spelling the second time they use the word.
“Libetarianism ”
and then they switch back
“Libertalians”
Against these examples of incompetence you have the following
Sentences that show good competence
“All I was looking for was some intellectual consistency.
They may disagree on some details but then again they’d know
what they disagree on or agree on among themselves.”
And Sentences that show an understanding of idiomatic English
“I wasn’t expecting Dr. Curry to police her blog but I
thought many who post here would know what’s scientifically wrong.”
“It’s like kids playing in a sandbox.”
So willard its not that hard to spot somebody who is trying to fake writing singrish or chingrish. 30 years working with the far east bro.
now, back in the day, I used to do a pretty good fake. takes practice.
The trick isn’t spotting a fake. It’s figuring out why it was faked. I’ve noticed two major categories for fakes like this. The first is to just hide the author’s identity so people can’t recognize his writing style. The second is to basically create a strawman. Put a stupid sounding comment up that advances one position and hope people will associate the position with the stupidity.
We can thank Moshpit’s inquisitiveness, even if we could still wonder how this amounts to a proof, what exactly does he have to lose if to refute his claim CRV9 would have to out himself, and how impressive his curriculum vitae sounds if we could collate all the breadcrumbs he left over the years appealing to his own authority over the Internetz, and especially here, whence in another part of the thread we were talking about this kind of claim.
In exchange for this worthwhile effort, we can prove that Mosphit’s first response to CRV9 was a fake. To that effect, we’ll see it play by play.
***
Here’s the attack:
> I understand your frustration.
Moshpit understands. We know that because he tells us. Moshpit simply gets CRV9.
> You think or hope that because people are talking that something must be happening or should be happening. Like some people should be having their minds changed. You see no progress in the discussion.
This probes for an intent that would need to be found in CRV9’s own words. Moshpit does not need to quote. When you get people, you don’t need quotes.
> No conclusion and no agenda.
By this innocuous sentence, we surmise that Moshpit injects into CRV9’s rant the memo readers should get: to satisfy CRV9’s complaint, Judy should have to have an agenda. An assertion that can’t be justified by reading CRV9’s rant. An assertion void of quote, and contrary to the spirit of CRV9’s rant. An assertion to dogwhistle that Judy has no agenda.
> And it bothers you even more because Judy, a scientist, is hosting this discussion. And perhaps you expect her to lay down some law or declare some winners.
Yes, perhaps. Perhaps CRV9 believes that God exists. Counterfactuals like these are quite useful when the point is to frame minds instead of talking with someone. (Not that they can’t.)
> That is one view of what a conversation should look like. It’s a instrumentalist view or utilitarian view of what language and dialogue and discussions are supposed to do. They are suppose to bring us somewhere. Settle something. Make a difference.
There is no such entailment between the idea that people talk to get things done and instrumentalism and utilitarism. Also, instrumentalism is a word that belongs to philosophy of science and utilitarism belongs to ethics. So an instrumentalist or an utilitarian conception of language is at best a metaphor, and the cunjunct quite abstruse.
In fact, surfing around suffices to make us see that the expression “utilitarianist conception of language” is often used as a slur against philosophers of language one does not appreciate. It targets pragmatism, a concept that honest brokers kinda find sexy.
But more importantly, these isms are there only to dismiss away CRV9’s complaint that the free-for-all discussions at Judy’s should be moderated in a way readers could feel it’s being administered by a scientific authority. There is certainly no need to entertain an utilitarianist conception of language to wonder about that, more so when we see at the end of this very post that **this is a technical thread**.
And then after this caricature, we have the fall, a simple proof by assertion:
> Happily, that’s not the case.
To what that **that** refers is left as an exercise to the readers.
In any case, we see that, according to Moshpit, CRV9 does not get Judy.
***
We thus conclude that Moshpit’s comment was, in its own way, a fake.
CRV9.
I understand your frustration. You think or hope that because people are talking that something must be happening or should be happening. Like some people should be having their minds changed. You see no progress in the discussion. No conclusion and no agenda. And it bothers you even more because Judy, a scientist, is hosting this discussion. And perhaps you expect her to lay down some law or declare some winners.
That is one view of what a conversation should look like. It’s a instrumentalist view or utilitarian view of what language and dialogue and discussions are supposed to do. They are suppose to bring us somewhere. Settle something. Make a difference. Happily, that’s not the case.
Blogs are a mirror image of the broader public debate. They certainly can at times direct the debate. Climategate in particular led to much greater confidence among conservatives in attacking the malfeasance of climate “scientists.”
And the larger debate has been did bring us somewhere. Back from the edge of the abyss we approached at Copenhagen. If the next U.S. election proceeds as it looks like it will, we will recede even farther from the decarbonization cliff.
This blog, WUWT, Climate Audit, and others all have influence, regardless of whether the general public sees them or even hears about them. Just as Joe Romm had outsized influence among progressive policy makers, skeptic blogs have the same impact among conservative policy makers.
If this weren’t the case, you wouldn’t have so many progressive bloggers attacking the skeptics/lukewarmers.
“There is abusolutely no progress in discussion and nobody cares.”
There has in fact been great progress in the climate “discussion.” Just not in the direction many of you would like.
CRV9:
I think you might be having us on—or being disingenuous maybe??
Apart from your purported anguish that no conclusion is arrived at here, you seem to be saying that if commenters here point out that the IPCC consensus is one that’s manufactured by certain scientists and activists for the purposes of presenting that consensus as the last word on AGW to governments—-to be the unquestioned premise for government policy-making—-that if they point that out and there’s much agreement here on it, then that means this blog is virtually making it compulsory here to say that ‘AGW is a hoax’.
If you really have spent some time here , you would know that’s not true—that it’s not here that anything is made compulsory , or made to fit a consensus.
That MO is for the blogs of the scientists right at the centre of the CAGW consensus and their trusty followers—the blogs where commenters who ask very respectful, but important questions are derided, demonised, smeared and labelled as shills of this and that and flat-earthers—–that’s if their comments are ever posted at all.
It’s the CAGW true believers, not the sceptics, who demand acquiescence and adherence to the ‘correct’ views—not here.
On those consensus blogs , it’s compulsory for commenters, if they want to be posted and have any hearing at all, to at least pretend to believe that CAGW is a bullet-proof concept—-the unassailable premise on which the whole world must be rejigged.
In my country, Australia, this ‘consensus’ that apparently was arrived at even while the most important elements of the earth’s climate system were and are little known, partly known or unknown—–threatens to destroy our country’s future—and has made it virtually compulsory for any politician aspiring to high office or government, to present himself as a true believer in the consensus—- or be destroyed politically.
The CAGW true believers are in government, and almost 100% of the media are in the tank with them , so the other major party is watched by the media with predatory focus—waiting to swoop on, en masse, and politically assassinate, any person in the Opposition party who shows the slightest sign of wavering from the ‘correct’ premise.
The result of this is that the true believers, with the enthusiastic help of the Leftist media, have forced on Australia, with no mandate from an election, a 23% across-the- economy carbon tax, specifically designed to end our coal-fired power generation industry, and eventually to end our coal and minerals export industries.
These are our largest export-earners, so this tax, born of the CAGW ‘consensus’ , will inflict enormous harm on our economy, and on our future.
We have almost no hydro [ the CAGW true believers having long ago dispatched that in favour of trees] , and no nuclear power—so we are going to have to get our base load power from unreliable , inefficient wind turbines and hugely expensive and intermittent concentrated solar.
The CAGW true believers’ compulsory ‘consensus’ will, unless the realist alternative government can save us in time, turn Australia from the country that has the world’s best-performing economy despite the financial crisis —-into a pre-industrial economic backwater.
S you should direct your question on distancing science from politics and ideology squarely at the CAGW scientists and their followers—where it belongs.
CRV9:
I think you might be having us on—or being disingenuous maybe??
Apart from your purported anguish that no conclusion is arrived at here, you seem to be saying that if commenters here point out that the IPCC consensus is one that’s manufactured by certain scientists and activists for the purposes of presenting that consensus as the last word on AGW to governments—-to be the unquestioned premise for government policy-making—-that if they point that out and there’s much agreement here on it, then that means this blog is virtually making it compulsory here to say that ‘AGW is a hoax’.
If you really have spent some time here , you would know that’s not true—that it’s not here that anything is made compulsory , or made to fit a consensus.
That MO is for the blogs of the scientists right at the centre of the CAGW consensus and their trusty followers—the blogs where commenters who ask very respectful, but important questions are derided, demonised, smeared and labelled as shills of this and that and flat-earthers—–that’s if their comments are ever posted at all.
It’s the CAGW true believers, not the sceptics, who demand acquiescence and adherence to the ‘correct’ views—not here.
On those consensus blogs , it’s compulsory for commenters, if they want to be posted and have any hearing at all, to at least pretend to believe that CAGW is a bullet-proof concept—-the unassailable premise on which the whole world must be rejigged.
In my country, Australia, this ‘consensus’ that apparently was arrived at even while the most important elements of the earth’s climate system were and are little known, partly known or unknown—–threatens to destroy our country’s future—and has made it virtually compulsory for any politician aspiring to high office or government, to present himself as a true believer in the consensus—- or be destroyed politically.
The CAGW true believers are in government, and almost 100% of the media are in the tank with them , so the other major party is watched by the media with predatory focus—waiting to swoop on, en masse, and politically assassinate, any person in the Opposition party who shows the slightest sign of wavering from the ‘correct’ premise.
The result of this is that the true believers, with the enthusiastic help of the Leftist media, have forced on Australia, with no mandate from an election, a 23% across-the- economy carbon tax, specifically designed to end our coal-fired power generation industry, and eventually to end our coal and minerals export industries.
These are our largest export-earners, so this tax, born of the CAGW ‘consensus’ , will inflict enormous harm on our economy, and on our future.
We have almost no hydro [ the CAGW true believers having long ago dispatched that in favour of trees] , and no nuclear power—so we are going to have to get our base load power from unreliable , inefficient wind turbines and hugely expensive and intermittent concentrated solar.
The CAGW true believers’ compulsory ‘consensus’ will, unless the realist alternative government can save us in time, turn Australia from the country that has the world’s best-performing economy despite the financial crisis —-into a pre-industrial economic backwater.
S you should direct your question on distancing science from politics and ideology squarely at the CAGW scientists and their followers—where it belongs.
My apologies for the multiple posting of the same comment. I don’t know why it’s happening, or I would rectify. Sorry.
Worth reading twice, so thanks, blind machine.
==============
CRV9 is a really bad fake. It doesnt take much training to spot it. meh.
One thing you learn in linguistics and when you teach composition is to spot the patterns in performance errors. CRV9 is faked. uttterly inconsistent errors and at the same time knows the difference between your and you’re. haha. I was surprised that willard was taken in by it.
Your comment to him might sound more fake than CRV9’s comment, Moshpit.
Data and programs to back up your claim, pretty please with some sugar on it.
Sorry willard, if you read moshpit carefully you will see I have pretty consistent standard with regard to supplying data and code.
1. When piece of science is published, I am under no rational obligation to believe in it when the data and code/method that was claimed to be used is not made available.
2. If somebody doesnt provide this, I am free of course to believe, but I’m not rationally bound to prove them wrong if they dont supply the data they claimed to use and the code they claimed to use. data as used, code as run.
3. Exceptions for IP may exist and public interest may trump these rights.
But you need to see the IP policy and look at the public interest.
So, the data is the words he wrote. You have those. The method is reading. you know how to do that. If that is not enough for you, then of course you are under no rational obligation to believe what I wrote or prove me wrong. Other folks will of course have a look at it and come to their own conclusion. That’s the beauty of it. And they will say “I see what Moshpit sees” or not. cause its all right there. you have the exact same data ( its right there) and the exact same tool ( that thing between your ears ). So, now can you help me get data for forest 2006? or get data from Spencer? The difference is pretty clear willard.. err I actually ask for data and code that was used in a publication and I actually use it to do more publishing. It’s a neverending thing you know. more data, more code. more fun. hopefully a few more papers, we will see.
It was a metaphor, Moshpit. I was asking for your evidence and your overall argument in whatever form they took. You kindly provided these elsewhere in this thread:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/13/no-consensus-on-consensus-part-ii/#comment-219598
The comment where you provided the evidence and the argument is timestamped “July 16, 2012 at 4:25 pm”.
My question was first utilized as a springboard for your “Free the Code, Free the Data,
FreeOpen the debate” on July 15, 2012 at 8:35 pm.Perhaps it took 20 hours to get my question?
I have pretty consistent standard… When piece of science is published
doesnt… dont… That’s
Utterly inconsistent errors and yet knows the difference between “claimed to be used” and “claimed to use.”
OMG MOSHPIT IS A FAKE
That’s a feature, not a bug.
This comment shows how indoctrinated the public is about science in general. When the public finally sees how pseudoscientific the AGW hypothesis is, it will be a blessing for all science, because it will open the eyes. When the AGW boat sinks, other boats will shake too and science will progress.
I didn’t meant to, but I guess I’ve offended many. I’m uneducated nobody. I’ve never practiced or learned any formal writting or making an argument formats. It was a spare of moment thing. Frustrated.
What I expected was some good news. i don’t like dooms and grooms of AGW. So I thought here the blog hosted by a climate scientist would have provide me some positive new insights, scientific that is. And I thought people who post here would be scientifically savy too since this is hosted by a scientist. I visited once before on the SkyDragon debate. I enjoyed it very much though I didn’t understand the half of them. I was kind of expected that kind of technical, scientific talks more, but of course without politics and ideology talks.
To be honest, I don’t understand the half of what you’re saying since I don’t understand the half of big words you guys are using. Just reading through spins my head.
However it seems it always ends up in arguing over ideology and politics every time. It seems there is no consensuse on scientific facts or data or observations among you. All I was looking for was some intellectual consistency. When I visit some established scientific institions’ web sites or RealClimate or SkepticScience, their basic scientific rational or explaination are consitent. They may disagree on some details but then again they’d know what they disagree on or agree on among themselves. Sadly, I can’t say that here. That doesn’t mean I believe scientist 100 %. Maybe 80%. I had issues with doctors once before.
All I was saying was you should have a self (your)peer review process here among yourselves. You were saying IPCC’s use of grey materials are serious problems then you should think that grey scientific arguments are more serious problems. I wasn’t expecting Dr. Curry to police her blog but I thought many who post here would know what’s scientifically wrong.
Please don’t say it’s a censorship. I’m not talking about opinions here. I’m talking about basic science. Isn’t that what peer review is all about? Peer reviewed to see if it’s scientifically valid? I don’t know I’m not smart enough to know that though.
I was just disappointed. That’s all.
By the way, what I think about Libetarianism is this.
I like it very much because I like liberty and liberty of speech. However, it sounds too good to be true.
It sounds as naive as comminism was.
It sounds as impractical as communism was.
They both rely on, communism on human goodness and honesty, libertalian on humanity.
What is the difference between rule of law and regulations?
Not everybody can become 1-2%ters. The whole pie is limited. You’re not playing against the house. It’s like stock markets. You get money from someone else.
Communism want to divide it so they force everyone to have just enough or what to have. Libertalians think the pie is unlimited. It is a typical sales pitch for ponzi schem.
the aw shucks act doesnt work. your attempt to imitate the style of someone uneducated is belied by some of your grammatical constructions.
the giveaway ( other than the inconsistency of your attempt to mimick an illiterate ) was your reference to sks and real climate. Those discussions always end in the same way as well.. some political rant, some nonsense about renewables etc.
I spent to many years reading freshman writing. Nice try, it’s really hard to fake ignorant. It would hep if you checked your last attempt and at least tried to make the same performance errors.
Thank you, Steven. You made my day.
English is my learned language. I’ve tried several EASL schools but I’m proud to say I’ve never finished any of them. I finished my highschool more than four decades ago. I still have a heavy accent in my speech which nobody could understand. The phrase I hate most is “Who?”. I got a job as skilled labor where I didn’t have to write but got laied off recently, hence too much time at the internet. I wasn’t really able to write before though I’ve always liked to read. I’ve started to practice writting 3-4 years ago. Internet helps me a lot when I write, much easier than looking up a dictionary.
Funny thing is I don’t care about grammar when I write or speak my native language. It just comes out naturally. Other funny thing is that I can’t calculate in english. I better be off now when I feel happy. Bye.
Pekka wrote: “The most important reason for the politicization is, however, perfectly legitimate. Deciding what is good climate policy is inherently very difficult and any difficult issue with potentially high stakes is rightfully politicized.”
Ah but Pekka, you’ve skipped a major step here, which is to ascertain whether any “climate policy” is even needed. I can only speak for myself of course, but were I somehow to become convinced that the planet was genuinely imperiled, and were I further convinced that certain steps had to be taken to mitigate this danger, I’d put my politics aside.
You do what many warmists do, Pekka, which is to assume facts that are not yet in evidence.
I didn’t skip or forget it, but for brevity I used one word for that: “potentially”. It’s pointless to try include everything in every message.
Bravo!!!
It is the same as using if or uncertainty…
But who would like to be absolutely certain when the funding DOES NOT show this in favor?
Garth Paltridge in his book ‘The Climate Caper’ describes frst hand from contemporaneous experience how the IPCC started off building consensus by assumption, deriling anybody who dared to disagree. He also explains why the scientific sociopoloitcal machine is nearly unstoppable. After reading it, much of the climate science blog banter/argument is just deja vu – impossible for anyone to win.
(Judy if you haven’t read it, it doesnt take too long at 111 pages.)
The only realistic way i see it can change is for skeptical scientists with litte external funding to conduct proper science exploring what Paltridge called the ‘load-of-nonsense’ theory. (i posted my ideas on the “just the facts” thread.)
“deriling” Thankyou blouis79! That’s a delightful new coinage. Obvious what it means (derile v. to wrongfoot, ridicule, disdain). I shall use it and continue to use it whenever I have a chance.
“derile”
But what’s the etymology? Combination of “deride” and “derail” ?
etymology of derile: brain slip from “deride” and “rile” – probaby will never take off….
Don’t care much for “relatives” as a verb.
I think it’s a crime against the English language.
Judith,
One aspect of the “consensus” as promulgated by the IPCC that you might want to consider is that there is some indication that even the “insiders” differ on their interpretation of the word.
Yet, for the most part, they remain deafeningly silent when it is taken up and – in effect – used as a cudgel by the media and by activist organizations whose pronouncements are far more likely to reach the public than any of the science upon which this “consensus” is supposedly based.
For example, as I had observed in June 2010, Mike Hulme wrote (my bold -hro):
Approximately a year later, as I had documented in (what has become a “dangling”) Conversation with an IPCC coordinating lead author, I was advised that (again, my bold -hro]:
it is this line-by-line approval process [of the SPM] that results in the actual consensus that the IPCC is famous for, and which is sometimes misunderstood. The consensus is not a consensus among all authors about every issue assessed in the report; it is a consensus among governments about the summary for policymakers.
Yet, as I had noted in that same post, to the best of my knowledge neither of these IPCC “insiders” (or any others, for that matter!) has taken the step of correcting the very public pronouncements of (for example and again, my bold):
Oreskes (in Science, Dec. 2004):
Greenpeace (July 20, 2010):
Union of Concerned Scientists (March 7, 2011):
And, as recently as a few days ago, Adam Corner had concluded an essay by noting:
In your post, (which I very much liked, btw!) you have asked for suggestions regarding the “way forward”.
This may seem somewhat “radical” from a conservative “diagnostician” such as I; but, IMHO, perhaps a good first step would be to excise this foggy, mythical, shape-shifting “consensus” from the ongoing debate.
IOW, I wholeheartedly endorse your conclusion that:
Hilary [stepping down from “anti-consensus” soapbox ;-)]
Ooops … sorry seem to have omitted some blockquotes. Above should read:
Judith Curry
It appears to me that you have captured and described the essence of the problems inherent with “consensus” in science and with the IPCC’s political consensus process.
As you point out, the logical progression: “consensus => harmony => acceptance => compromise” is alien to science itself, which is based on the progression: “skepticism => controversy => dissention => challenge”
The IPCC “consensus process” is a political, rather than a scientific, process, i.e. it dictates political consensus rather than scientific inquiry.
As you have written, it results in group-think and confirmation bias,.
As was demonstrated by Climategate, etc., it resulted in the exclusion and marginalization of dissenting scientific findings and viewpoints and fudging the data to make them fit the consensus.
It even failed to achieve a political action plan (at Copenhagen, Cancun, etc.) and it resulted in a basic mistrust in the overall public of IPCC and climate science in general.
You summarized this with:
So much for the basic conflict between “science” and “consensus” and the failure of IPCC’s “consensus” process.
Now to your “ways forward”:
The two quotations, which you cite early on (Feynman and Dessai et al.), point the direction:
You write:
To me the most basic question this raises is whether or not IPCC has outlived its usefulness, as it is structured today.
My personal opinion is that this is the case. Things can only go downhill for the “consensus” position on CAGW and for climate science in general as long as IPCC continues to be the driving force. It has quite simply lost the public trust.
You state
In other words, climate science must return to the scientific bases which make it a science and away from a consensus process which make it simply politics as usual.
To do so, IPCC must either be totally restructured or terminated. The “consensus process” must be eliminated. This includes IPCC’s myopic fixation on human GHGs to the virtual exclusion of all the many other factors, which influence our planet’s climate, and its sweeping under the rug of all uncertainties, ambiguities and dissenting views.
I do not believe that even a total restructuring can achieve this, as long as IPCC has the brief it now has and reports to the political body, to which it now reports.
IOW, I truly believe that the only “way forward” to salvage climate science from its current malaise is to terminate IPCC and cancel the publication of the planned AR5 report (which will only be yet another continuation of the “consensus” approach).
It should be replaced with a small panel of scientists and engineers, with climate scientists representing differing opinions, including some supporters as well as rational skeptics of the “consensus” viewpoint, but no “advocates”. This should be a bottom up approach and these should not be chosen for political reasons or to fill “national quotas”.
The brief of the group should be to collect and summarize scientific papers related to our planet’s climate and the natural as well as anthropogenic causes for climate changes, much in the same general fashion as IPCC, but without the “consensus process” and the resulting myopic fixation on anthropogenic GHGs.
They should not be chosen by politicians or by venerable “scientific” institutions whose political leaderships have joined the “consensus”, but by someone who is both knowledgeable in the subject matter and not bound by any “consensus” viewpoint.
Who would fit this description?
You know the players much better than I do, but I would guess that on the top of the list of individuals who will choose the panel replacing IPCC should be:
Judith Curry
Roger Pielke Sr.
John Christy
Richard Best
Roy Spencer
Steven McIntyre
Raymond Pierrehumbert
Richard Lindzen
Ken Minschwaner
The fate of IPCC and its possible replacement is a topic you left open in your “way forward”, so I have added my comments. I realize that this is a “hot topic”, but I hope you will address it nevertheless.
While some of the details still need fleshing out (as you point out), the rest of your “way forward” makes sense to me, as I understand it:
– plan and implement local and regional actions to anticipate and adapt to extreme weather events
– encourage new technologies to expand energy access, particularly in those regions, which do not yet enjoy access to reliable, low-cost energy
– hold off with the implementation of any global mitigation schemes based on reducing human GHGs until remaining uncertainties in the scientific justification can be better clarified, cost/benefit analyses for each specific action can be made, other alternates can be considered and any unintended negative consequences can be fully evaluated
I would fully agree with your summarizing statement:
Lots of luck with your paper.
Along with all the other denizens here (plus most of the individuals who have an interest in the ongoing debate surrounding AGW), I am looking forward to reading it.
Max
.
Max.
If science had absolute facts, there is no position to compromise.
Compromising means you found fault in your research and are taking the graceful way out before the roof collapses.
Error
Of course, I meant Dr. Richard Muller (of BEST) – not Richard Best.
Sorry.
Well said, Max. I agree that the IPCC is unsalvageable and endorse your alternative – essentially, something I have argued for for a few years.
Max, i agree with a lot of what you say, especially that th IPCC has outlived its usefulness. But how will the politicians do that???
The logical next step from Copenagen 2009 is to properly establish quality fit for purpose earth temperature measurement and ongoing monitoring of relevant variables, so that if we really look like hitting the 2degC target some time in the next century or so, then we might know with a greater degree of certainty when and why.
So do we need an IPCC if the WMO could be tasked with oversight of the global measurement and monitoring system??
I’d put Moshpit in Rajenda Pachauri’s place on one condition. No romance novel allowed.
Consensus is indispensable in public life. It can be understood as the result of a group of individuals asking themselves the question “given the advantages of agreement, and the disadvantages of conflict, what, of my set of beliefs and wishes, am I prepared to concede, to optimise the outcome for me?” As such it explicitly condones the making of policy many of whose elements will be objectionable to some of the consensus group, all of the time. Ten seconds thought tells us that representative democracy could not function any other way. The case is surely the reverse for science, which is interested in precisely those elements of controversy which policy-makers shun. As Feynmann insisted, a scientist should contest his own beliefs, if he can’t find a peer to do it for him. Once scientists sit down to decide what they are prepared to concede in order to display a consensus, they have agreed to stop doing the very thing that made them scientists. They have become ‘scientists’ – as in Climate ‘Science’ – a term that was coined to Christen this counter-scientific philosophy, and to distinguish it from boring, irrelevant old meteorology, physics, etc, whose outmoded insistence on scientific method was such an obstacle to ‘action’.
At this moment of the discussion, Bart Verheggen usually returns to his medical analogy:
> If you get a second opinion on your health condition, and it confirms what your specialist said in the first place, your trust in the diagnosis probably increases. (If you are a medical professional yourself and are confident that they’re both wrong, it becomes a different story of course) Now imagine that you collect the interpretations of medical professionals all over the world, and by and large they their conclusions converge to the same broad picture.
http://judithcurry.com/2010/09/30/frames-and-narrative-in-climate-science/#comment-2747
But he’s busy.
Lots of occurences of the word “consensus” in that thread, for those who doubt that it is not implied as unanimity.
Michael Larkin July 14 10.36am:
Wayward etymology, speaking with forked tongue. Michael, forked tongues are not uncommon here in the land of Oz. )
Regarding ways forward, it is notable that there has apparently never been a real debate about the differing views on climate science. A suggestion made here in Australia is that Tony Abbott (the Leader of the Opposition) should hold a judicial enquiry or even a Royal Commission into the science. Key representatives from both the IPCC and skeptical communities would be invited to present evidence on each of the main issues relating to the anthropogenic CO2 caused AGW, and be subject to rules of evidence and cross-examination. A panel of judges would hear the enquiry, and after the hearings are completed, would deliver a judgement.
This would soon demonstrate whether in fact a consensus exists or not on the main issues, and also demonstrate the strength (or weaknesses) of the respective views advanced.
“This would soon demonstrate whether in fact a consensus exists or not on the main issues, and also demonstrate the strength (or weaknesses) of the respective views advanced.”
The answer might be 42, but what is the question?
The problem is Royal Commission doesn’t know the right questions.
Try asking some questions on this blog and see what the results are.
Mondo,
If that were to happen and the judges were to rule favourably on the denier/sceptic case, that would of course be accepted by the denier/sceptics.
On the other hand, if they were ruled against, they would simply point out that judges were paid by governments, and their findings would be rejected.
Yes, there is little point in organizations investigating themselves, a good example being the Climategate crooks’ ‘blinder’ exoneration by their own universities. What a indeed.
Likewise any government exoneration / Commission of Enquiry to establish whether government funding biases climate science in a way likely to benefit government – ie towards alarmism – will invariably conclude : No.
What is needed is a radical upgrading of FOI : a complete opening up of all relevant government employees’ activities, so that everyone can see their every move. Only then can government really become accountable, and serve the public rather than itself.
But the IAC reported the deeper problems in the IPCC and where as that gone???
Mondo,
Yes. We do need a proper judicial enquiry or Royal commission, where proper rules of evidence are used.
That would require proper documentation of the relevant evidence. The relevant evidence would have to be documents to the standard required for supporting major financial investment decisions.
This excellent letter to the Prime Minister by a retired engineer (who claims to be agnostic on AGW) explains very clearly what is needed for due diligence. http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/spending-billions-why-not-do-a-due-diligence-study/
We require due diligence for investment decisions in the private sector. If not done properly, those responsible may be sent to jail. The magnitude of those investments are orders of magnitude less than the proposed investments in mitigation strategies. It is, therefore, entirely reasonable for rational people to want appropriate due diligence – to the appropriate standard for the massive investments being advocated – before our governments make the investment on our behalf.
I’d argue it is totally unreasonable for the Left to oppose due diligence, judicial enquiry and/or Royal Commission.
Nullius in Verba explained well in this comment what quality of documentation is required:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/06/05/conservatives-who-think-seriously-about-the-planet/#comment-111418
In the UK there are regular parliamentary inquiries into the state of the science (that’s what the Select Committees do all the time on all sorts of subjects). There was the case in the UK relating to the showing of An Inconvenient Truth in schools where the judge found the science was mostly sound though some discussion points were required around which bits of the film were propaganda (eg. implying but not stating that the flooding of New York was imminent). There are occasional similar hearings in the USA – wasn’t there that embarrassing one where the best person the “sceptic” side could put up was Christopher Monckton?
“Science is belief in the ignorance of experts”
It strikes me that there is a both an intelligent interpretation of Feynmann’s oft quoted remark, and a dumb one, which is, of course, that to be an expert implies a greater level of ignorance than a non-expert.
Naturally, people like Peter Lang and Jim Cripwell seem to prefer the latter.
Anyone care to have a stab at the more intelligent interpretation?
“Science is belief in the ignorance of experts”
“Anyone care to have a stab at the more intelligent interpretation?”
Science is about finding knowledge. If knowledge is already found, there is no science, hence Science is belief in the ignorance of experts.
I’ll attempt to give you the answer you’d like.
Accept without question whatever the Left ideologues tell you.
Neither Peter Lang nor gbaikie have got it yet. Richard Feynmann didn’t have anything too difficult in mind, or even too political. He also would be thinking in general terms, rather than anything in particular like climate change, IMO.
Tempterrain,
Correct that Richard Feynmann didn’t have anything too political in mind. But that apparently, is what you have in mind, but cannot recognise it or if you do recognized it you are not prepared to admit it.
By the way, have you identified any significant error (that would substantially change the conclusions) in this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#80580 ?
I’ve just posted another comment on the SkepticalScience thread about Nordhaus. I wonder if it will be deleted or properly considered.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82217
Peter,
Thanks again for the useful link to Nordhaus. It would probably be suitable posting, its own right. Nordhaus makes the point that its less expensive to tackle GH gas emissions than ignore them.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
Tempterrain,
Clearly you didn’t read the comment I just posted on Skeptical Science, or you didn’t understand the point.
You say:
You failed to mention that that is based on the academic but totally impracticable assumptions which underpin his analysis. here are some of them (in my words):
In the lead article for this blog thread, the author, Dana1981, states that “skeptics” (used as a pejorative term here) “misrepresented Nordhaus’s research”. I cannot speak for others but I don’t believe I have misrepresented his research. However, I do not accept some of the conclusions he draws.
Dana1981, on the other hand, appears to have seriously misrepresented Nordhaus’s work. Dana has spun a story advocating carbon pricing but does not mention the assumptions which underpin Nordhaus’s research. The assumptions are academic but totally impracticable to achieve in the real world. Here are some of the assumptions (in my words):
• Negligible leakage (of emissions between countries)
• All emission sources are included (all countries and all emissions in each country)
• Negligible compliance cost
• Negligible fraud
• An optimal carbon price
• The whole world implements the optimal carbon price in unison
• The whole world acts in unison to increase the optimal carbon price periodically
• The whole world continues to maintain the carbon price at the optimal level for all of this century (and thereafter).
If these assumptions are not met, the net benefits estimated by Nordhaus cannot be achieved. As Nordhaus says, p198 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf :
In other words, if only 50% of emissions are captured in the carbon pricing scheme, the cost penalty for the participants would be 250%. The 50% participation could be achieved by, for example, 100% of countries participating in the scheme but only 50% of the emissions in total from within the countries are caught, or 50% of countries participate and 100% of the emissions within those countries are caught in the scheme (i.e. taxed or traded).
Given the above, we can see that the assumptions are theoretical and totally impracticable. To recognize this, try to imagine how we could capture 100% of emissions from 100% of emitters in Australia (every cow, sheep, goat) in the CO2 pricing scheme, let alone expecting the same to be done across the whole world; e.g. China, India, Eretria, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia.
So, what will be the cost of complying with the requirements when they are fully implemented to the standard that will eventually be required?
Using Treasury and Nordhaus estimates, the Australian carbon tax and ETS will cost around $10 for every $1 of projected savings. But the savings will not be achieved, because they depend on all the assumptions being met, and clearly they will not be. Furthermore, the costs can be expected to be much higher than is being admitted so far. Read more here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
Well how about this? That great, unbiased, reliable, authoritative CAGW Alarmist site, SkepticalScience, deleted the comment I posted yesterday. You can read what the comment said in my post above @ July 15, 2012 at 3:12 am.
Deleting comments that do not support the agenda of the CAGW Alarmist sites is par for the course (or par for “The Cause”).
It just adds to the general lack of confidence in the alarmist sites. If they had the evidence to support their belief’s they would not need to delete comments that do not support their agenda. My comment, which they deleted, showed that SkepticalScience’s in-house scientist, Dana1981, had clearly misrepresented Nordhaus’s work by not stating the assumptions on which his work is based. Instead of trying to defend their article, they deleted my criticism.
Peter Lang,
It would be too much off topic to get into a detailed discussion about Nordhaus’s economics. It wouldn’t lead anywhere anyway. Its just another argument from you guys on why nothing should be done on climate change.
You don’t really care what argument is the correct one or even if there is a correct one. Anything will do for you guys. Deniers run through them all: the earth isn’t warming, or that the Earth is warming but its from natural causes, or the Earth has warmed by human GH emissions but its only a small safe amount, or it has warmed but it stopped in 1998 and now the atmosphere is saturated so we’ve had all we’re going to get, or it has warmed but that warming is a good thing etc etc etc
So you are now focusing on the The-Earth-has-warmed-and-may-even-warm-more-but-its-too-expensive-to-do-anything-about-it argument?
Well so what?
Tempterrain,
So, what you are arguing is that decisions should not be made rationally, they should be made on the basis of your beliefs, scary adjectives and your latest nightmare. Just chuck proper decision making out the window and run with your gut feeling. Is that a correct interpretation of how we advocate we should make investment decisions?
I’d reverse that. I suggest that applies to your approach to this topic.
I notice you haven’t yet acknowledged how silly is the video you put up, and clearly believe (the one purporting to be risk analysis) by a young extremist alarmist.
tempterrain
Back to your Feynman quote.
The meaning is rather obvious.
I’m sure you will agree that the scientific method is the backbone of science.
This method works on the principal of rational skepticism, dissent and scientific inquiry in order to challenge the “experts”.
The challenge is validated or refuted based on empirical scientific data derived from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation.
And back to Judith’s paper, this is exactly the opposite of consensus, compromise, eliminating dissenting findings and views and accepting the conclusions of the (self-proclaimed) “experts”, as embodied in the IPCC “consensus process”.
Can you see what it means now?
Max
Max,
So you think it means that science progresses by some little, non-expert, guy coming along and telling the more experienced expert guy, not only that he hasn’t got it quite right, which is the easy bit, but also then goes on to present an improved version of the theory or even a better and differerent theory altogether?
I suppose you be able to find isolated examples of where something like that has happened but generally they would be the exception.
Feynmann himself was an expert in Quantum mechanics and received a Nobel prize for his work. He may have started off as a little guy but once he’d got his teeth into the subject he rapidly became an expert.
So still no prizes yet, I’m afraid.
But science isnt the belief in the ignorance of experts.
People fail to see the irony in quoting Feynman as the expert on the falibility of experts.
“People fail to see the irony in quoting Feynman as the expert on the falibility of experts”
Exactly right.
Everyone will be aware of sayings like “science, in answering one question will always raise two more” and “the more you know about any particular subject the more you realise how much you don’t know” And, of course, the more scientific expertise and knowledge anyone acquires , the more they do realise that as experts they become ever more ignorant.
That’s not to say that they actually do become more ignorant of course. It just seems that way to them. Just because they don’t know everything , it doesn’t mean they know nothing. Its the millions of non experts out there who do actually know nothing, or next to nothing, who really could be described as ignorant, except they just much less aware of it.
Feynman wasn’t saying that experts were infallible either. If you read his writings it is obvious that he was always aware that he could be wrong, and was always looking for ways to prove himself wrong. But he wouldn’t have thought he was wrong just for the sake of it. He wouldn’t have thought that one of his undergraduate students would know more he did , for example. That’s the really dumb interpretation of his oft quoted remark.
Fred Singer has a long established record of providing stuff that sounds like science for political hit jobs. BTW, do you know what he got for the NIPCC?
You are either shark jumping or poeing Prof. Curry.
Eli, Excuse my ignorance ( does that make me an expert according to the Feynmann quote?) , but what’s “shark jumping and poeing” ?
Agree with you that the NIPCC and Fred Singer should be steered well away from, if that’s what you mean.
> What’s “shark jumping and poeing” ?
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
Eli
At a guess, I would say the funding behind inputs to the IPCC report, is many orders of magnitude larger than that going into NIPCC inputs.
Doing proper science is, indeed, much more costly than writing reports for propaganda purposes.
Pekka
No one objects to “doing proper science” (i.e. following the scientific method of rational skepticism, dissent challenge and inquiry, all supported by empirical evidence based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation).
What you refer to as “writing reports for propaganda purposes” would include the IPCC reports, which are compiled by a political body to support the CAGW premise, and -unfortunately – many billions are being spent annually to support this process.
Max
Max,
You repeat standard accusations. They are not made true by repetition.
It is certainly true that the IPCC is a political organisation, politically funded, with political objectives. The burden of proof lies with those claim it is NOT a propaganda organization.
Eli
Your attempted political hit job on Fred Singer falls rather flat.
$143,000 is truly peanuts compared to the billions being thrown down the rabbit-hole (pardon the pun) to support the “consensus” process.
Max
Yes, Fred Singer’s once-off £143, 000 against the Consensus’s ~$10billion pa. Explains exactly why there is a consensus in the first place.
Where do these estimates of $10billion come. I have no idea of the total cost of climate science, but 10 billion appears ridiculously high.
Perhaps including all cost of weather forecasting and satellites used in that adds up to such numbers, but climate science, I don’t believe so easily.
Yes, it it seems would need quite big bureaucracy to cost 10 billion, particularly if you talking about a yearly costs.
But who pays for conferences?
The cost of climate science : all the university departments, all the empirical studies, all the climate models, satellites, other equipment, chunks of Nasa, other labs … ?
“Where do these estimates of $10billion come.”
Its just a made up number. The real figures, for the USA, are here:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/presentations/prcolo408.pdf
@tempterrain
I have read the presentation you link to. I did not see any numbers relating to climate change specifically.
Since you explicitly state that the ‘real figures’ are shown in that presentation, please point out the slide number and area where they are discussed.
En passant, I note that the US Global Change Research programme has a budget of $2.6 billion. Together with other countries contributions, I have always believed that the total global spend on ‘climate science’ is about $5 billion pa.
Taken over the last 20 years we have collectively spent about $100 billion. And seem to have f**k all to show for it. We know very little more now about climate than we did back in 1990. Lots of academics have made cushy careers, we have more unvalidated models than you can throw a stick at, we’ve had more failed international boondoggle conferences than I can remember, several international airlines have been kept in business by Green Activists. But there has been almost no increase in knowledge :-(
$100 billion wasted for no result.
Are the pro-consensus people unable to avoid orbiting through their limited displays of ignorance? Reasonable estimates of what is spent on and in support of the consensus are in the cumulative ~$50 billion range.
It is consensus defenders and promoters who hold conferences and write peer reviewed papers on how to sell the consensus. It is in support of the consensus that the long list of failed international meetings are held.
Hansen, Gore, Solyandra executives and other executives of the government supported failed/corrupt companies receive their loot due to the consensus.
Whoever thinks that consensus is somehow underdogs fighting the good fight uphill against huge opposition are the ones jumping any sharks- deluding at least themselves.
So thanks, Mr. Rabett for a nice chuckle.
Judith,
This is a great paper.
My suggestion for the last section are:
1. A new section on embracing the uncertainty. I do not know if there are any references. Given the uncertainty in the science and the potential long tail consequences of getting our response wrong, the IPCC might argue for Apollo program like investment in computing (and algorithm) advances for the modeling community and additional satellites (and supporting infrastructure) for the measurement community. Similarly, the current IPCC policy recommendations are based on current technology and a 1999 view of world energy options. By embracing the notion that the recommended policy responses may be suboptimum, the IPCC could encourage research into creative new technology and policy options. In particular, a breakthrough in energy storage technology is required to make IPCC CO2 goals achievable.
2. As you imply, the consensus led to tunnel vision. Pursuant to bottoms up approaches – adaptive governance, IMHO, the UN/IPCC really missed an opportunity by not focusing on adaptation. The singular focus on carbon is a kick in the teeth to poor nations. For example, rather than primarily focusing on solar to supplant carbon emissions in rich countries, they could have focused on solar as a way to prepare poor countries for climate change of any sort and BTW alleviate poverty. They would ask the rich to partner with the poor to make this so. It would have been a good idea 10 years ago. It is a compelling idea at current panel prices. Instead of UN managed programs, the IPCC should encourage and the UN facilitate direct partnering between rich and poor communities to minimize the UN/NGO tax on the invested dollars. A message like this would IMHO be universally embraced.
Another example – compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles in the US are rare. Serendipitously, over the past few years, natural gas supplies have exploded and prices have plummeted. As a regional adaptation, the IPCC could encourage the US to embrace CNG vehicles. This would reduce the carbon footprint of the US fleet and make oil more affordable for the poor.
Possibly related: This article summarizes green investment http://www.bnef.com/PressReleases/view/180.
Finally, the recent leveling of trends could be good for an enlightened and humbled IPCC. By acknowledging the uncertainty they can encourage increased research investment. By embracing adaptation, they can encourage policy responses and investment decisions that support a greater good and are more universally accepted. Absent the false certainty, I think the believers and the skeptics share many core values.
You must be joking pushing another dogma – renewable energy. Haven’t we got enough dogma without adding more?
RobertinAz,
Can I suggest you crunch the numbers on renewable energy. rather than just accept the spin being propogated by the vested interests. If you can’t, this may help:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/
Cost of electricity around $300/MWh and CO2 abatement costs around $300/tonne – that’s about thirty times the current EU price of CO2 in the EU Emissions trading scheme.
Is that what you want to do to us? How do you think the developing countries can afford these costs?
Hi Peter,
We are writing at cross purposes. My point was that in some cases, solar makes sense absent any consideration of carbon. The price of solar is a non-issue if it is the only alternative to supply power to remote locations and the poorest of the poor. Nor is it relevant if supplying the solar becomes a moral imperative. A medium sized high school could supply a basic solar setup with power storage to a small village for less than what the kids spend on sugared drinks in a school year. And with kids looking for things in which to believe, IMHO, many high schools would.
In specific answer to your question. I have been evaluating bids for grid tied residential solar that guarantee delivery at between 6.6 and 8.4 cents/kWh over 20 years. My current average cost is 11.5 cents/kWh and on my time varying rate plan, my peak cost is 24.5 cents/kWh at times at which solar output is highest. So in Arizona and with panel prices at 2 cents per watt, it pencils out even without subsidies.
I would never argue for solar as a replacement for base load capacity. I am a big fan of a crash thorium program. However current panel prices, Arizona’s rate profile and subsidies means that we are seeing an explosion of solar installations in Phoenix. Solar also makes sense where base load capacity and related transmission infrastructure does not exist.
RobertInAz
Maybe we are writing at cross purposes. However, I suspect we are not. Solar is very expensive and unlikely to ever provide cost competitive baseload power. Baseload power is about 80% of our electricity consumption. Therefore, if we want to replace fossil fuels (which is what the whole issue is about) then solar and wind and the other non hydro renewables will have negligible impact.
You say solar makes sense in some situations. I agree, off grid in remote locations. However, this comprises a miniscule proportion of electricity demand, so it irrelevant with regard to reducing emissions.
Wene you start arguing morals, you’ve lost me. From my perspective the morals of the Left, progressives, socialists, Greens are repugnant. They cause enormous suffering for what purpose – to satisfy the religious beliefs of the wealthy inner city urbanites in rich countries.
If you want to satisfy your moral beliefs, go the Green Church and pray to the Green God.
You clearly have not the faintest understanding of economcs or financing such schemes.
This discussion is a total waste of time.
Hey, I am just telling you what I can get in Phoenix. There are real cents/guaranteed kWh of delivered power- it is like you have not read what I am paying. These are real numbers and price/kWh beats what I pay for base load capacity.
“However, this comprises a miniscule proportion of electricity demand, so it irrelevant with regard to reducing emissions. ”
Correct, there is no demand because there is no capacity to deliver power. So rather than focusing on replacing base capacity with solar in the rich countries to reduce carbon, let us focus on creating capacity where none exists in the poorest places to reduce poverty and thereby increasing their ability to adapt to whatever climate change might occur.
The good is independent of what happens to the climate.
“You clearly have not the faintest understanding of economcs or financing such schemes.” Actually, I am secretary/treasure of tiny non profit the routinely executes schemes in a fourth world location. We have not ventured into appropriate solar, but as I have recently learned how radically the economics have changed, we might.
@Robert in Az
Have you actually installed this kit and verified the predictions? Or are they just salesman’s hype?
PS : I note that they are ‘guaranteed’ power costs. ‘Guaranteed’ by whom, and for how long? What penalties are open to you if the guarantee is not met?
Latimer Alder,
The guarantee is a contract – so it is more than salesman hype. The lessor in this case is NRG – the largest power producer in the USA. NRG is also the largest solar power producer in the USA by virtue of its residential lease program like the one I signed. The pricing was roughly equivalent across multiple lessors. I was more comfortable with a lessor that was a power producer getting into leasing rather than a financial company getting into power production.
In this deal, the lessor is not the installer – two separate entities. The lessor is out cash when the system is installed. The deal pencils out for the lessor today. It probably pencils out if carbon offset credits disappear, but maybe not. It should make the lessor a lot of money if the value of the carbon credits increases.
Latimer: there is a cash payout if the guarantee is not met for the kWh shortfall. The guarantee schedule is over the 20 year term of the lease. If the lessor fails to meet the terms of the lease then there is an arbitration clause. The lessee of course can stop paying the lease.
@robertinaz
H’mmm
I am no expert in US power contracts, so I’ll have to believe that you have got a very good deal here.
But something here doesn’t ‘smell’ right. We had similar apparently brilliant ‘investment deals’ for solar in UK until the truly enormous subsidies (5 x market value) were cut and the whole market died. Now a pile of people have a lot of junk on their roofs – reducing both the saleability and value of their biggest asset – and little income to compensate.
Within your excellent deal, somebody somewhere is taking a big risk, and I suspect that it is you.
Good luck if it isn’t, but its usually a good rule to start with that if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.
“But something here doesn’t ‘smell’ right. We had similar apparently brilliant ‘investment deals’ for solar in UK until the truly enormous subsidies (5 x market value) were cut and the whole market died. Now a pile of people have a lot of junk on their roofs – reducing both the saleability and value of their biggest asset – and little income to compensate.”
A BIG difference is Arizona and UK. UK at high latitude and it’s cloudy.
Arizona is lower latitude and largely sunny. This isn’t very detailed, but shows the basics:
http://www.oynot.com/solar-insolation-map.html
Here closer view Arizona:
http://www.aps.com/main/green/Solana/Benefits.html
So can get an average of about 8 Kw/hours per day
Uk [it’s year of sunshine]:
http://contemporaryenergy.co.uk/solarmap.htm
so best 1100 kw/h
So 8 times 365 is 2920 Kw/h
So more twice the sunlight as best location in UK
Plus in UK you get a large amount of the power in near summer. So 4 months of year you get 1/2 of what Arizona gets on average. but other 8 month sucks, fours months around winter one getting about 1/8th of Arizona.
So cloudy days in winter don’t matter much cause you get much power anyhow, but near summer cloudy days one losing more potential power.
So if you have fixed panels in arizona, one probably favors a bit toward angle best for winter and get more even power thru out year. UK probably have angle for summer, cause might get the all power you can get, and forget about winter.
@gbaikie
Thanks for your remarks.
I have absolutely no doubt that from pure geography Arizona is a far more favourable location to think about solar PV than is UK. And given our current miserable ‘summer’ – just about anywhere on the planet would qualify on that scale too (*).
But my thought was not so much about the technical feasibility, but about the contract itself. It’s the same problem as those adverts for books saying ‘buy my book and I’ll show you how to become a billionaire’ – which begs the question ‘so why are you writing books rather than just getting on with following your own advice and becoming a billionaire yourself?’
Same concept here. If Arizona is such a favoured location for Solar PV, why doesn’t the power company just rent or buy some cheap land (I may be wrong but I have an idea that there is plenty of it about in Arizona) and build its own solar panels there? It would get get all the benefits without having to do anything tedious like involving lots of small (and uncontrollable) third parties. Lots less hassle and much more control.
The only reasons I can come up with are either that
a. It shifts some or all of the risk to the third party (bad if you are that 3rd party)
b. There is some regulatory constraint that means it is obliged to offer favourable terms (bad..regulatory constraints can be changed)
c. There is some form of subsidy that makes this worth their while (bad…subsidies can go as fast as they come)
Until we have satisfactory answers to these questions, I still think that an element of caution is needed. A deal that seems too good to be true usually is.
(*) Its amazing how all the (C)AGW advicates go to ground when we get an extended period of sh*t weather. The moment the sun comes out they’ll be squawking about ’emissions’ causing it. But they never explain how the emissions cause unusually cold and wet weather. Last month was about the worst since records began (100 + years). Maybe AGW only works if there is an ‘r’ in the month, or on every alternate Wednesday or something…
@robertinaz
@gbaikie
Sorry – I’ve just seen the flaw.
‘It probably pencils out if carbon offset credits disappear, but maybe not.’
Since carbon offset credits are an entirely hypothetical entity with only a nominal and hence highly volatile (including zero) value, the whole scheme involves the power company moving the risk of their future value from the power company to you.
Companies – especially in pretty mature and ‘boring’ areas like energy – like to have predictable income streams. This allows them to return predictable amounts to their investors and hence make themselves attractive to those who themselves need predictable income..pension funds being the most obvious.
So from the energy companies perspective, managing carbon credit risk is something they’d rather not have to do. The possible upside gains aren’t sufficient to balance the downside risk. And so it is worth their while to go through all the effort of dealing with lots of small installations like yours.
If you’re happy taking that risk, then fine…both parties get what they are happy with from the deal and it is a win-win. But recognise the risk you take.
“In specific answer to your question. I have been evaluating bids for grid tied residential solar that guarantee delivery at between 6.6 and 8.4 cents/kWh over 20 years. My current average cost is 11.5 cents/kWh and on my time varying rate plan, my peak cost is 24.5 cents/kWh at times at which solar output is highest. So in Arizona and with panel prices at 2 cents per watt, it pencils out even without subsidies. ”
Arizona has high amount to solar energy:
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1961-1990/redbook/atlas/
And with subsidies it could make economic sense.
Subsides can make anything make economics sense.
If you off the grid sources of electricity can be
very costly, using solar could cheaper in the that situation.
But without the grid, one has added costs for solar- or don’t
use any or much electrical power when the sun goes down.
If you have the grid, it can cheaper because you draw power from grid when sun goes down. Also there laws which government forces
power providers to buy any excess electrical power, and usually at
higher cost than electrical provider pay for it in a free market.
This leads to obvious point, if you want replace powerplants with solar energy panels, there would not be the power available for when sun goes now, nor would be power provider to forced to pay you from any excess electrical power you generate.
So to supplement electrical power, in places like Arizona, one could maybe do it without subsidies. But just having connection to the grid is by itself a form of subsidy. Though might not be parasitical to power companies if one reducing peak power needs [requiring them to make surplus power capacity for hours other then peak hours- or import it at perhaps higher price off the main grid. .
@gbailke
“This leads to obvious point, if you want replace powerplants with solar energy panels, there would not be the power available for when sun goes now, nor would be power provider to forced to pay you from any excess electrical power you generate.”
Absolutely agree. Centralized solar power as base load capacity does not make sense to me with fossil fuel costs where they are. Residential solar in AZ makes sense because peak solar and peak consumption times coincide and the power is produced where it is used. Residential solar in AZ offsets power plants that would otherwise be required that would operate for only a few hours per day. In AZ, solar or the incremental power plant capacity that service peak demand operate in the same window.
In AZ, when my system overproduces, I get credits. If it overproduces during peak power, I offset peak power usage anytime up to the end of the year. If it overproduces during off-peak power, I get off peak credits. If I do not use up all of my credits, the power company cashes me out at the lower price/kWh.
“The price of solar is a non-issue if it is the only alternative to supply power to remote locations and the poorest of the poor.” It’s always an issue, spending on solar may displace spending on something else with greater benefit, e.g. clean water, sanitation …
1. Energy supports both clean water and sanitation
2. The scenario I propose is designed to create now spending.
In specific response to your spreadsheet, the installed cost of a grid tied rooftop solar system is less than $5,000/kW before subsidies. All quotes came in at less than $5500 for a 4 kWish installation. Annual production guarantee over 20 years is roughly 1500 kWh per installed kW. That starts higher and declines to a little lower. Again, this is Phoenix which is (with Tuscon) probably the best US case for grid tied solar. Running the math for the system I selected we are looking at a cost of guaranteed capacity of 13.7 cents/kWh before subsidies. This is a lease deal which, if completely prepaid with the subsidies going to the lessor, drops the cost to 6.6 cents/kWh.
Sorry – one more. For rooftop grid tie solar in Phoenix, there are virtually NO economies of scale for larger systems.
A$5,000/kW is the EPRI estimate for grid connected solar PV in commercial applications of 5 MW to 50 MW. These are the estimates adopted for the Australian carbon tax modelling. I provided the link.
The cost is much higher for residential solar PV. The output is also much less and that average life expectancy much less.
The Queanbeyan solar farm (55 kW, fixed array) (near Canberra Australia) was completed in about 2001 or 2002 using PV panels of about 1998 vintage. It is already considered way out of date. This will continue indefinitely. So 20 years is not an appropriate life to use for the economic life of the plants.
“This is a lease deal which, if completely prepaid with the subsidies going to the lessor, drops the cost to 6.6 cents/kWh.”
A lease could good idea, as it could reduce your risk. Though perhaps on terms in lease. Particularly how much you need up front.
No cost or obligation other than 6.6 cents/kWh, and it’s a no brainer.
Jim Weedman
“I am no expert in US power contracts, so I’ll have to believe that you have got a very good deal here.”
An OK deal. Had I been willing to do it myself, I think I could have got the $16,500 4 KW system installed for $14,000. That $2500 is (roughly) the profit to the solar installer (which other than standard warrantee, has no residual financial risk). For that, and for 20 years of somebody else managing my solar system – I’ll pay $2500. There is a lot of competition in this market.
Why does NRG put a solar panel on my house rather than build a large centralized plant? I think Latimer nails it:
“b. There is some regulatory constraint that means it is obliged to offer favourable terms (bad regulatory constraints can be changed)
c. There is some form of subsidy that makes this worth their while (bad…subsidies can go as fast as they come)”
Here are the subsidies that I would get that I sign over to NRG:
– $4950 federal tax credit (this is within the year) This subsidy goes for another couple of years.
– $1000 state tax credit (this is within the year). Not sure how much longer this one lasts
– $2205 power company credit (this is over a period of years). This one is going away soon.
I am not sure what subsidies are available to standalone solar installations. Recall that the environmentalists were opposed to one near the Imperial valley in California because of the required transmission infrastructure.
————————-
So NRG gets almost half the cost of the system back from guaranteed payers over the first few years of the life of the system.
NRG gets to depreciate the system over some small number of years. I bet they get to depreciate the entire $16,500 capital cost. As a homeowner, I do not get this “subsidy”.
————————
Finally, to get the 6.6 TO 7.7 cents/kWh I prepay all or part of the lease. Most people prepay little or non of the lease. In those cases, the cost of the power jumps up close to 11 cents per kWh, which is a nice little profit to NRG over the course of the lease.
The advantage to me to prepay the lease is that I can depend on all of those other payng installations to keep NRG engaged in this endeavor for the life of the lease.
So back to the numbers:
DIY minus subsidies means the sustem would cost me about $8500.
Prepaid lease means the system would cost me $8300 with a system on my roof to be addressed in 20 years.
Other ways to look at the econmomics:
In AZ with decent citing, 1 kW of PV capacity produces an average of 1500 kWh per year over 20 years. The cost of the panels (which is still half of the cost of a system even at todays depressed panel prices) is about $2,000/kW. The value of the power that the 1500 kWh offsets is roughly $300/year at todays price schedule. Hard to nail this number down because power price rages from a high of $0.245 peak summer to $0.195 peak winter to $0.065 off peak. About half of the panel production is peak hours.
Other thoughts
Subsidies almost exactly offset the cost of the panel or half the cost of the system.
My power company, APS, has promised price stability for the next 4 years.
All of APS marginal capacity is now Natural Gas. One wonders how long NG prices will remain insanely depressed in relation to its BTU value.
“Since carbon offset credits are an entirely hypothetical entity with only a nominal and hence highly volatile (including zero) value, the whole scheme involves the power company moving the risk of their future value from the power company to you.”
Two considerations:
1. If the power company goes away then I still have a functioning solar system on my roof with a 25 year warrantee on the panels – which may also be worthless given the carnage in the panel producer ranks. So in addition to the power panel breaking, the lessor has to disappear. The current scheme is based on history of many years of solar installations in AZ.
2. There is no residual financial risk to me. I pay what the contract says. For thousands who are not prepaying the lease, they do not pay if the lessor does not perform.
Note that by embracing the uncertainty, the high energy guys got the LHC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider.
“The use of ‘denier’ to label anyone who disagrees with the IPCC consensus leads to concerns about the IPCC being enforced as dogma, which is tied to how dissent is dealt with.”
Maybe:
“The use of ‘denier’ to label anyone who disagrees with the IPCC consensus leads to concerns about the consensus being dogma, which is tied to how dissent is addressed.”
Robert in Az
The use of the word “denier” to label anyone who disagrees with the IPCC “consensus” is an integral part of the “consensus process”: marginalization and ridicule of those who dissent from the “consensus” view.
It is no better than “flat-earther”, “lunar landing denier”, “big oil shill”, “politically motivated reactionary”, or any of the other rather silly “ad hom” terms being used by the CAGW supporters to describe those who dissent from their personal opinion.
Nor is it any better than “warmist”, “global warming hysteric”, “climate fraudster”. “Kool-aid sipper”. or any of the equally derogatory terms used by the other side.
Max
peter lang, 15 july 12.41am:
Oh no, Peter, yer hafta spell ‘sceptical’ as ‘skeptikal,’ it’s the rule! Rules fer everything, hey tempterrain, it’s the consensus thing.The collectivist , authoritarian tribes yer engage with insist yer comply.
Beth,
The language is actually called English, rather than American, and in England they spell it ‘sceptical’. If I’ve got that wrong there are plenty of Brits on this blog to correct me!
But, both Brits and Americans spell ‘you’, ‘for’ and ‘have to’ the same way. So you should try and at least get those words right!
tempterrain
“Consensus” means
Ther’s more folks whut writes “skeptical” th’ way AH do than th’ way YOU do, so ah mus’ be righter ‘n you.
Max
PS Fergit about them islanders…
Cut everything original and leave the quotes from Eban, Koolhaas, de Lint, Thatcher, Crichton, and Feynman.
Unless of course you’re being paid by the word. Then by all means bloviate profusely and with the aid of a thesaurus attempt to get into the Guiness Book of World Records for the most ever redundancies per column inch.
Dave
You make a good point (at least for the analysis section)
For the “ways forward” section I’d suggest two words:
“Trash IPCC.”
Max
PS But then that would not qualify as a scientific paper. These always include a lengthy preamble starting with “Adam and Eve” and listing (almost) everyone who ever wrote an opinion on the subject being discussed (with emphasis on those with whom one agrees).
Government is inherently interested in growing itself, raising taxes and regulations. It is to this end that governments essentially commissioned the IPCC to provide them with an apparent consensus on dangerous global warming, so that could start taxing on that basis.
Tempterrain says: “thanks for the link to Skeptical Science”.
You’re most welcome Tempterrain. The more people can see the CAGW advocacy sites for what they really are – spin merchants for socialist/progressive/Left ideology – the better.
But, Peter, if the scientific consensus proves to be correct, which it well could do, the “spin merchants of socialist/progressive/Left ideology” will be crowing about how they’ve been proved right and you’ve been proved wrong for years, decades and, maybe even, centuries to come.
It will be alright for you. You’ll be dead. But think about those generations of right wing libertarians to come. Just imagine how hard it will be for those still unborn souls. They will have to re-invent history somehow to explain it all away. They’ll have to say that people like Peter Lang, Manacker etc etc were socialist imposters, and their secret agenda was to discredit free market economics. They’ll have no other choice.
Do you really want to leave that legacy?
@tempterrain
Have you stopped taking your medication while I’ve been on hols? First you’ve been totally spooked by Greg Laden(?)’s re-presentation of Pascal’s Wager. Now you’re off on some legacy kick. Or is that just you have ‘over-celebrated’ the imposition of the Carbon Tax?
Whatever the cause, there is a notable degradation of the quality of your posts in the last fortnight….
Thank you Latimer. I’ll take that as a compliment! I really will worry when you start saying something nice about me. Unless of course I think you are only saying something nice to cause me to worry that is :-)
I’ll be more than happy to show my warm friendly and cuddly side just as soon as you stop writing drivel. And don’t forget the medication!
But, Tempterrain, if the Alarmist’s wildly exaggerated claims about catastrophic consequences prove to have been incorrect, which it well could do (probably will), the “spin merchants of socialist/progressive/Left ideology” will just skulk off to the next scare campaign – actually they already have; it’s called “Sustainable Development” (regurgitated and recycled from the 1990’s scare campaign).
However, if you and your ilk get your way and implement the policies you advocate, the real damages – the economic damages and poverty that it causes or extends for longer than necessary – will be carried by all of us and mostly by the poorest people and the poorest nations. You never show any understanding or genuine concern for the consequences of the policies you advocate, do you?
Tempterrain, you arguments is all emotional and irrational. So it is no sound basis for sensible policy decisions. I suggested you follow through on the video you posted and actually do the number crunching as in a decisions tree. Why don’t you? You’d be surprised what you find and what you learn – if you are objective!
Peter Lang,
You’re betting against science. Of course you could win, there have been a couple of examples when science has been wrong but the odds are against you.
But us lefties know how to avoid these mug bets. Is this because we are smarter than you guys?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095549/Right-wingers-intelligent-left-wingers-says-controversial-study–conservative-politics-lead-people-racist.html
Again, a comment showing how indoctrinated the convinced are. He’s not betting against science, au contraire!
Your left/right dichotomy is not even wrong.
Jest can’t seem ter manage it, Tempt, ( 15/07 2.20 am,) suffer from Cracked Brain Syndrome, don’cha know. Language is tricky fer some of us.
A Sort of a Song.
Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
…through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose ( no ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.
William Carlos Williams. Hope yer enjoyed it Tempterrain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=794psOmPEzc&feature=related
We have a discussion of a scientific consensus that goes along rationally until the agenda of the presenter leaps out and ambushes us after about two minutes of seeming to be going somewhere else.
Does the subversion of the two consensus opinions (actually, last I checked Physicists had logically concluded there was no need for an external explanation, and thus by parsimony, we dispense with it) to the purposes of the speaker that have nothing to do with the science make the science itself less worthy, less reliable or less true?
Not so much. It just makes guys who jump out of dark corners and fling open their labcoats to reveal their mustard seeds seem desperate and pathetic. I see no evidence the IPCC is entirely made up of this sort of creep, or even mainly or even largely so disposed.
The NIPCC? I have my doubts about. Well, ‘doubt’ is a euphemism for we all know very well there are unscientifc agendas galore in NIPCC and GWPF, Heartland and Fraser Institute, aimed at the science done under the auspices of the political forces these groups oppose.
Would be nice if worldwide cooperative efforts to clarify and communicate science (consensus or no) didn’t have to be caught up in the crossfire of such intractable and bilious factions. Especially given how really similar the factions are, when you open them up and look inside their command-and-control philosophies.
Absent the policy crossfire there would be no need to communicate the science. As for parsimony, the simplest explanation is that we are coming out of the LIA and returning to MWP conditions. Normal natural oscillation. No need to introduce new entities like CO2 forcing. We need to understand the oscillations.
See http://news.yahoo.com/world-much-warmer-roman-medieval-times-now-104205882.html
Natural oscillation.
Do you actually believe that article is a truthful representation of the conclusions of that scientific paper?
Also, one could argue that paper does a bit of damage to the nonsense about global temperatures reflecting some sort of mysterious recovery from the putative shrimpy ice age.
That paper then is likely correct. Global mean surface temperature appears to mean area of land not covered with ice, which is kinda important if you own property that borders a glacier or tundra.
If you have lake front property in Eastern Africa then you have some advantage in a “shrimpy ice age”
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rRs69Ekl9Zc/T_7kMjPiejI/AAAAAAAAChY/baz0GHWEGbI/s917/60000%2520years%2520of%2520climate%2520change%2520plus%2520or%2520minus%25201.25%2520degrees.png
If you where trying to determine the change in energy over time, you might want to stick to the majority of the energy instead of temperatures in reindeer land.
I think it is a very interesting paper. I don’t think it claims the crappy warmer times of the past are warmer than this crappy warmer time.
Well which is it!! Shrimpy or crappy? :) There should be a glossary on the site for all this technical jargon.
David Wojick | July 15, 2012 at 7:20 am |
Coming out of the what now?
What does “coming out of” mean, and how is it a simple explanation, or an explanation at all?
Are you saying there’s a ‘right’ climate, and it’s the MWP, and something caused the LIA but it’s gone now so we’re ‘returning’ to the MWP by some other unknown mechanism, too?
What was this cause of the LIA? Indeed, what exactly was the LIA?
What, for that matter, is the MWP supposed to be?
What is the mechanism for returning to the MWP? Is there a pendulum? A force of climate like a force of gravity?
Babbling nonsense terms isn’t science.
“Normal natural oscillation.” What does that even mean, applied to global temperature? If it’s a yo-yo, where’s the string?
“We need to understand the oscillations.”
Physicists understand oscillations pretty well. And yet I have not once heard a Physicist say, “we don’t need to explain light or sound, they’re simply oscillations.” Oh. Wait. I have heard of a ‘scientist’ who does something like that, on the Skydragons threads. But I’m trying to avoid ridiculing ideas too much, so I won’t go there.
Non-explanation bafflegab is not explanation. It’s not science. It’s not even worth finishing a re
Except C02 forcing is real david and measured. The very same physics that tell us doubling C02 will give us an extra 3.7Watts is used to defend our country and process UAH data. 3.7Watts.
LIA? how much colder was it? and what was the suns input at that time?
maybe 1 Watt less than today.
Oscilations explain nothing. you want to understand
1. how big they are
2. what caused them
3. what happens if you add ADDITIONAL forcing (3.7W) on top of that
LIA? how much colder was it? and what was the suns input at that time?
maybe 1 Watt less than today.
Assume you right why is 1 watt sunlight not as significant as 3.7W
of forcing.
Perhaps 1 watt of sunlight affect water vapor in tropics. Perhaps just 1 less watt or 1 more watt of sunlight affect how much water is evaporated in ocean.
Of it matters what meant by 1 watt. TOA or surface. And hopeful not some averaged 1 watt divided by 4.
Here they are talking TOA:
“Variations in total solar irradiance were too small to detect with technology available before the satellite era, although the small fraction in ultra-violet light has recently been found to vary significantly more than previously thought over the course of a solar cycle.[2] Total solar output is now measured to vary (over the last three 11-year sunspot cycles) by approximately 0.1%, or about 1.3 Watts per square meter (W/m2) peak-to-trough from solar maximum to solar minimum during the 11-year sunspot cycle.”
So we have seen about 1 watt at surface difference in recent times, but it possible it was a bigger difference in LIA.
But i assume 1 watt, one is comparing it 3.7W. Is the 3.7W somehow calculated to equal to sunlight watts. Is the same amount heating that 3.7W increase in sunlight would be? Because in terms of watts of energy they are all the same in terms of how much they would warm earth.
Except for Kip Hansen’s very good post above, no-one else has remarked upon a limitation of Judith Curry’s review that is so restrictive, as to make the review itself nearly irrelevant: the review makes no reference to the immense medical literature relating to consensus, skepticism, denial, and willful ignorance. The review should have addressed at least the following points:
—————
(1) BOTH MEDICAL SCIENCE AND CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENCE ARE DIAGNOSTIC AND PRESCRIPTIVE
This reflects the key common-sense point which however Judith’s review does not even mention, that controversy associates to medical science and climate-change science because both are prescriptive.
—————
(2) BOTH THE MEDICAL LITERATURE AND THE CLIMATE-CHANGE LITERATURE SEEK TO EVOLVE STANDARDS-OF-PRACTICE AND CONSENSUS
Needless to say, standards-of-practice and professional consensus, in medicine and in climate-science, are similarly dynamic and similarly controversial too.
—————
(3) PHYSICIANS AND CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENTISTS BOTH ENCOUNTER DENIALIST BELIEFS AND PRACTICES
Indeed, a PUBMED search for the words “denial”, “denialist”, and “denialism” finds hundreds of instances of each in the medical literature. It is striking even many of the same persons, who contribute to the literature of AIDS denialism and of tobacco denialism, contribute also to the literature of climate-change denialism; and therefore at the individual level, parallels to the clinical presentations and treatment modalities for alcoholic denial and cancer denial should be reviewed.
—————
(4) CONSENSUS AMONG PHYSICIANS AND CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENTISTS ALIKE IS SUBJECT TO EXTERNAL PRESSURE FROM COMMERCIAL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS INTERESTS
In particular, the medical literature of lessons-learned relating to tobacco-denial, HIV-denial, vaccine-denial, inefficacy-of-intercessory prayer denial, and even evolution-denial should be reviewed.
—————
CONCLUSION The author has made a promising start, but the manuscript should not be accepted in its present form, by reason of inadequate review of the medical literature relating to consensus skepticism, denial, and willful ignorance.
Tobacco denialism
Brings us back to the point that the tobacco-funded consensus was that tobacco is harmless, thus boosting the prospects of its funder.
Just like the state-funded consensus now says there is CAGW, thus boosting the prospects of its funder.
What a surprise.
Tomcat | July 15, 2012 at 5:30 am |
And yet, statists universally oppose the most effective actions to counteract CO2E emissions, whether on the left the socialists (who want command-and-control regulations shown to be of limited effect) and communists(who limit children per family but not coal per person), or on the right the tax-and-spend corporate subsidizers (who favor paralysis over decision, more study of well-established effects to action, and giving tax dollars to fossil fuels, expropriating land for pipelines and turning food crops into a supplement for gasoline).
The statists don’t get anything out of the science, except to delay action further. The people who benefit from immediate action of privatizing the carbon cycle are the owners of the carbon cycle who are being ripped off by free riders. Every citizen, per capita. I’m a citizen. I want my money.
Give me my money.
Equating CAGW speculation with routine medical diagnostics is ridiculous. Equating well founded climate skepticism with grief denial is insulting. This is your stupidist argument so far Fan. I am impressed.
David Wojick, your posts are paradigmatic! :) :) :)
Except I am not greiving. You are equating two very different situations, based on a word. Like I said, it is just stupid.
David Wojick | July 15, 2012 at 9:21 am |
And yet we’ve seen your posts move through anger into negotiation, so we know grieving cannot be far behind.
David,
Using the argument that CAGW speculation being equated with routine medical diagnostics is ridiculous is itself ridiculous. Using the argument that equating climate skepticism with grief denial is insulting is insulting too. Telling Fan that this is his stupidest argument so far is your stupidest argument so far. I’m impressed that you’re impressed!
PS Anyone form the other side may then come back with something like: Using the argument that using the argument of CAGW speculation being equated with……. is ridiculous and is itself ridiculous is even more ridiculous!
But this is more ridiculous than ever! Don’t you think?
Except for Kip Hansen’s very good post above, no-one else has remarked upon a limitation of Judith Curry’s review that is so restrictive, as to make the review itself nearly irrelevant: the review makes no reference at all, to the immense medical literature relating to consensus, skepticism, and denial. The review should have addressed the following points:
—————
(1) BOTH MEDICAL SCIENCE AND CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENCE ARE DIAGNOSTIC AND PRESCRIPTIVE
This reflects the key common-sense point which however Judith’s review does not even mention, that controversy associates to medical science and climate-change science because both are prescriptive.
—————
(2) THE MEDICAL LITERATURE AND THE CLIMATE-CHANGE LITERATURE BOTH SEEK TO EVOLVE STANDARDS-OF-PRACTICE AND CONSENSUS
Needless to say, standards-of-practice and professional consensus, in medicine and in climate-science, are similarly dynamic and similarly controversial too.
—————
(3) PHYSICIANS AND CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENTISTS BOTH ENCOUNTER DENIALIST BELIEFS AND PRACTICES
Indeed, a PUBMED search for the words “denial”, “denialist”, and “denialism” finds hundreds of instances of each in the medical literature. It is striking even many of the same persons, who contribute to the literature of AIDS denialism and of tobacco denialism, contribute also to the literature of climate-change denialism; and therefore at the individual level, parallels to the clinical presentations and treatment modalities for alcoholic denial and cancer denial should be reviewed.
—————
(4) CONSENSUS AMONG PHYSICIANS AND CLIMATE-CHANGE SCIENTISTS ALIKE IS SUBJECT TO PRESSURE DUE TO COMMERCIAL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS INTERESTS
In particular, the medical literature of lessons-learned relating to tobacco-denial, HIV-denial, vaccine-denial, inefficacy-of-intercessory prayer denial, and even evolution-denial should be reviewed.
—————
CONCLUSION The author has made a promising start, but the manuscript should not be accepted in its present form, by reason of inadequate review of the medical literature relating to consensus, skepticism, denial, and willful ignorance.
Fan
Changing the subject (from climate science and the IPCC “consensus process” to “tobacco-denial”, “HIV-denial”, etc.) is merely a diversion, either intended to obfuscate or simply pointless.
Max
Manacker, have you never heard Bismarck’s aphorism:
This goes double for scientific consensus, particularly in prescriptive disciplines such as medicine and (now) climate-change science too.
Climate-change denialists prefer that citizens *not* read the scientific literature, for precisely the same reason reason that AIDS denialists, tobacco denialists, vaccine denialists, evolution denialists, etc. *also* prefer that citizens *not* read the literature.
As for the economic and moral implications and analysis in the literature, these too are similar in health-care and climate-change.
That’s just common-sense, eh? :) :) :)
That’s why Judith’s article should thoughtfully consider this (very interesting, extensive, and relevant) medical literature on the social construction of scientific consensus, the role(s) of skepticism, the motivations for denialism, and the synthesis of standards-of-care.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/14/Whedon-Goes-On-Anti-Capitalist-Rant
Uh oh … Tom, now yah’ve gone and done it.
Yah’ve gone and p*ssed-off Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. Not to mention, Black Widow, Thor, Nick Fury, and Steve Rogers aren’t happy with you either!
`Cuz hey, the Avengers are one-and-all of them, huge fans of effective public-private science-and-engineering partnerships! :) :) :)
Of course, the Avengers *do* squabble about it on occasion. :) :) :)
The other area in meical science that has some revelence is the approach to systematic reviews. The IPCC reports are esentially SRs.
It would be going a long way out on a limb to suggest that Cochrane reviews are ‘manufacturing consensus’.
They are supposed to be like SRs but they are one sided, hence bad SRs.
Huh??
Micheal —
If I had said what David did, I would mean that the IPCC was supposed to do Systematic Reviews, but instead they have ended up doing mostly ‘consensus confirming’ reviews — for all the reasons previously stated by so many above.
Of course, there are a lot of quality variations in the different chapters and some are better than others.
But they don’t do the basic job, IMHO, of sorting out the poor work from the solid work and then collating the results from ONLY solid properly done work that has not only passed peer-review once (to get into some journal – a process currently under a lot of criticism in the CliSci world and known to have been co-opted in the recent past) but that has withstood broader review from the entire field (for instance, hasn’t been immediately shown to be ‘statistically improbable’ in the next paper by some critic in another journal).
Thus, the devil ‘confirmation bias’ enters in and their summaries are based primarily on papers that agree with their long-standing consensus positions.
Just to repeat. Equating CAGW speculation with routine medical diagnostics is ridiculous. Equating well founded climate skepticism with grief denial is insulting. This is your stupidist argument so far Fan.
fan oh fan, re yr ‘denial and wilful ignorance’ comment …
Jest when i was thinking i could live with that, yer-had- ter – go- and- use- the- denier – word- -in- yr point (3) . fan, yer need help, I’m havin’ sleep therapy fer CB Syndrome, -not sure if it’s working- but I’ll give it a go – , say, fan, music and looking at the stars helps.
Beth Cooper, anyone can access through PUBMED More than one thousand scientific articles whose titles concern “denial”, “denialism”, and “denialist”.
This vast body of denial research extends back though many generations of scientists/physicians, and it vividly shows us the messy methods by which science grapples with cherished ideas, serious diagnoses, and controversial practice.
Arguments that the existing literature of denial is irrelevant to climate-change, and indeed, attempts to censor public discussion of the *word* “denial” are largely motivated by a desire to restrict discussion of the *literature* of denial … as we see plainly in numerous comments here on Climate Etc.and still more prevalently in editorials on ideology-driven sites like WUWT.
Fortunately, denial-motivated censorship of ideas is ineffective … for reasons that the scientific literature of denial itself shows us plainly.
Which is GOOD! :) :) :)
Equating CAGW speculation with routine medical diagnostics is ridiculous. Equating well founded climate skepticism with grief denial is both insulting and stupid.
David Wojick, it appears that your post (above) may contain a typographic error: reasoning and references seem to have been accidentally omitted … leaving only (what appear to be) fact-free smears and slurs.
So please post the other half of your opinions, David Wojick! :) :) :)
Fan
Yes, the deliberate mislabelling of skeptics as denialists is probably the greatest intellectual triumph of the Consensus camp.
Cool, Max lol.
fan, instead of ‘denial,’ implying ‘denying the *truth* of a proposition, a
p – r – o – p – o – s – i – t – i – o – n fan not an established truth, there’s the added WW11connotation besides, (subtle eh!)
Yer know, fan, scientific debate in the past was able ter git by w/out the *d* word, using terms like ‘criticizing,’ refuting; even ‘falsifying,’
Though, fan, i do recognise that yr ‘ more than ONE THOUSAND ‘science articles using the terms ‘denial,’ ‘denialist’ and ‘denialism’ can’t be wrong. One thousand articles can’t be wrong. Yr might say there’s a consensus mightn’t yer?
Beth Cooper, please notice that my post affirmed, not an opinion, but a plain verifiable fact: There exists a vast and still-growing scientific literature, encompassing many thousands of articles, and extending back through many generations of scientists, that relates to “denial”, “denialism”, and “denialist”.
The passionate desire of some folks, that we willfully ignore the existing scientific literature of denial, is itself — needless to say! — a particularly striking instance of denial, eh?
Thank you for a thought-provoking question, Beth Cooper! :) :) :)
There is a lot more literature on superstition and those who fall for it.
Peter Lang, in testing your assertion we find 4,791 articles containing variants of “denial” their title and/or abstract, whereas only 590 articles similarly contain variants of “superstition.”
Thus the scientific literature relating to “denial” is approximately 8X larger than the literature relating to “superstition”.
Both literatures are relevent to climate-chance science and policy, needless to say. :) :) :)
What further claims would you like to have checked against reality, Peter Lang?
I suspect you’ve probably been somewhat selective as to what you’ve included in your search. :)
yes, but papers about denial of services, papers about monkeys, papers that use the word denial are not really on topic.. they dont even qualify as tangents. As you can find, by doing a search, words get used in all sorts of ways, different ways, by all sorts of people. What’s a word mean?
There are many approaches to answering that. some things we consider.
From the speaker side, we want to investigate how the word entered the linguistic community.. so we look at first use. In the climate debate “denialist” entered the debate with an explicit connection to the holocaust.
Of course that doesnt mean that every speaker buys into that meaning, but its historically there. From the listener or response side of the equation, we look at how people respond to the word to understand the meaning. ( the meaning of a sign is the response to the sign). Here to we see differences, those who take the word as a badge of honor and those who see it as an insult.
pointing out how others use the word in other contexts is not very smart semiotics. It’s pretty stupid semiotics.
The question is what do you want to DO with the word “denier” or what are you trying to DO with the word. communicate? convince? insult? enrage? tarnish?
You’ve got a giant lexicon to choose from. When you make choices those choices have consequences. So, its simple. what are you trying to do with the word denial? and how is that working? yes, other people used it. In other places for other other purposes directed at different audiences.
What are You trying to do? and how is that working.
You mean Fanny’s an off-topic wonder? OMG
My impression is Fan is not a human, it’s a ‘bot’. It’s just too bone-crushingly dumb.
fan. the fact that * thousands* of articles exist on denialism etc doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Yr statement only attests to an energetic publishing industry from yr faction. Evidence, not adjusted modelling, but data that can be replicated, workings that can be checked, honest transparent research, that’s what counts.
Yr won’t need thousands of *persuasive* commentaries if yr come up with the goods.
Beth Cooper, your ability to assimilate and then dismiss,many thousands of scientific articles relating to denial, within the span of a single morning, is notable … even incredible! :) :) :)
As for what you call “an energetic publishing industry from yr faction”, please allow me to thank you sincerely, on behalf of every engineer, mathematician, and scientist since Archimedes, Pythagoras, and Democritus. :) :) :)
“A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what’s real and what’s not and most of us have been going along with it ever since.” – Charles de Lint
Sure. Great definition of patriarchy. ;-)
“Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually” – Abba Eban
I am in solidarity with Michael and several other commenters, on this one. Still, if Ms. Curry wishes to openly leads with politics, why not also present other interpretations of consensus? She argues with an almost unexamined bias, presenting consensus as wallpaper for bad process and bad decision-making; but surely there are many quotes on quotapedia, or wherever one gets these things, to reflect that a consensus process requires you to put aside dominating a process with your personal interests in order to come to a conclusion that everyone can live. I have no doubt there are plenty of such quotes (including from more contemporary Jewish leaders). Such political balance would improve this political paper, especially since for many decades, the United States and other dominant countries have not required the agreement of other countries to assert their interests.
I am going to suggest that, regarding the concept of ‘consensus’, there is nothing wrong with seeking the agreement of others – unless of course, you have absolutely no interest in anything but your own ideas and interests.
I am also going to suggest that regarding the theoretical principles and ideas of Feyerabend, one must recognize that the interpretation of his insights may or may not support Ms. Curry’s or denizens’ view of the IPCC. Feyerabend scholars understand that constancy, and therefore what might be popularly called a scientific consensus, is not necessarily evidence of failure, on Feyerabend’s view. Based on Hegel and Mills, Feyerabend offers a radical corrective to both theory and methodology, however, those insights are balanced with Feyerabend’s arguments in Consolations.
In Consolations, epistemic arguments include support for the positive proliferation of a theory based on development and improvement or enhancement, as part of the dialectical process of science. Arguably, this is a description of both the process and the reporting of the current science. At least, it is possible to consider strong arguments in support of the IPCC that are not only consistent with Feyerabend but actually developments of Feyerabend’s strongest scientific concerns given the historical rejection of climate change science by establishment politics, and the demonstrated and continuing validity of scientific methods used to assess theory choice in climate change studies.
This article does not even consider this or evidence awareness of this and that would be its central weakness, as argumentation, IMO.
Reaching a consensus on what to do belongs to the political process. It can be reached legitimately only by all people affected or by their elected representatives. Scientists or experts should not aim at that kind of consensus, they are not authorized to do that.
Consensus in science is a totally different concept. It’s a description of the state of scientific understanding. There’s consensus ion some issues and not on some others. That can be changed only by changes in knowledge, not as a compromise. It’s possible that part of the scientists can influence the other part properly by presenting them scientific arguments. That may lead to wider consensus, but properly only when it’s based on valid scientific arguments and on real acceptance of their validity.
The work of IPCC involves both concepts of consensus. The task of IPCC is to report on the extent of scientific consensus honestly and without claims on consensus, when there is none. Choosing, what to write and, how to formulate the text involves the political type of consensus that should be used to assure maximal objectivity and reliability of the report.
What is the consensus that Judith is supposed to write on, I don’t really know. Certainly about the scientific consensus, but should she write only on that or also on the political type consensus?
My feeling is that it’s not at every point fully clear on which one she is writing. The concepts are so fundamentally different that it should always be fully clear which one is discussed.
Good point, i am working on clarifying this
Excellent point Pekka. As you say (1) the two concepts are fundamentally different but (2) the work of the IPCC involves both concepts. This is precisely the problem, but perhaps the ambiguity is deliberate? After all, the IPCC is co-owned by the UNEP, a political mission organization, and the WMO, a scientific organization.
This ambiguity is what politicization entails, a studied confusion between science and policy, and not just in the UN. It may be that Dr. Curry cannot unravel what has been so well woven together.
Yes, great point Pekka, but in my opinion you yourself conflate the two when you say that of course the debate is politicized because of the nature of what must be done re mitigation. Personally, I don’t think we should even be having that discussion yet, except perhaps in the broadest of terms.
Clearly, the most damaging politicization is intentional on the part of the warmists. They know they’ve automatically got half the country’s support, simply by characterizing skeptics as stupid, anti-evolution, intelligent design promoting Republicans.
“The task of IPCC is to report on the extent of scientific consensus honestly and without claims on consensus, when there is none.”
According to whom? Not according to the politicians who created the IPCC. Not according to the politicians who fund the IPCC. Not according to the politicians who run the IPCC.
The IPCC has performed exactly as it was designed to and, until the collapse of Copenhagen, had been a resounding success at providing the propaganda necessary for government apparatchiks to assert ever more power over the energy economy.
If you want to change “is” to “should have been,” you might have a point. But that ship sailed decades ago.
The IPCC is like Michael at the end of the movie Halloween. He’s lying there, he looks dead, but if we don’t cut his head off, you can bet he’ll be back for a sequel.
If the published climate science is as wrong as the cancer and biotech research published in the most prestigious journals in recent years (see Amgen and Bayer replication work), then 75% or more is wrong. The incompetent sloppiness revealed in work by Mann, Rahmstorf, Briffa, Jones, Steig, Monnett, Harry Read Me, and the SST work gives strong reason to doubt much of the climate work that hasn’t been checked. Why should the public put any credence in science which is rarely replicated when that work which IS replicated turns out wrong most of the time?
The very phrase “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron. Science is _not_ a popularity contest, and scientists do not “vote” on whether or not a theory is “true.” By the Scientific Method, all scientific theories and hypotheses are tentative and provisional, and _no_ theory is “true” — only “not yet falsified.” Anyone who talks about a “scientific consensus” has failed to understand how the Scientific Method works at the most basic level.
When someone uses the word “consensus,” they are talking _politics_ — not science.
This sounds like Popperian epistemic extremism. Taken literally it would mean that there is no such thing as the accumulation of scientific knowledge. The fact that any belief may turn out to be false does not mean that no belief is true. Science is about consensus. Progress is made when questions are answered. The only problem with climate science is that the consensus claim is bogus and political.
You lost me there. No, science isn’t about consensus. It’s about the facts. How many times have we beat that one to death?
P.E. | July 15, 2012 at 4:30 pm |
Beat it some more. It needs to die.
We have a consensus on that.
Science arrives at consensus by the inevitability of its methods of discovery, not because consensus is a goal, or even desirable.
If you collect enough facts and apply right inference, consensus will result eventually; all that need be discussed thereafter are what units of measure and naming conventions to standardize to.
Science does not produce absolute facts. Every result remains open to refutation.
Because science does not produce absolute facts the best that science can produce are results that are consistent with observations and that have significant explanatory power, i.e. they predict many results that can then be verified.
When science has been successful in the above a large majority of scientists agrees that that theory is good, better than alternatives that have been proposed and may well remain valid also in the future. This agreement is scientific consensus. It is the closest relative of truth that we can get from science, but it is not an absolute truth or fact.
Short version of the above:
Science is about consensus.
Pekka Pirilä | July 15, 2012 at 4:37 pm |
Science is about consensus like honey production is about beeswax.
Pekka, I have a statement below that directly conflicts with yours. What I mean is that the act of doing science is not about consensus. It is about doing new things rather than repeating previous results. However, science may result in consensus as more independent lines support the same hypothesis.
I guess we agree now?
PE, the confusion is two senses of about. Science is about discovering facts. But science is a social process, such that it advances when the facts are agreed upon. Thus it is also about consensus. We are not still debating whether the sunor earth is the center of the solar system. That is progress.
Skeptics should not deny the possibility of progress just because the warmers are claiming a false consensus. Challenge the claim, not the concept. Skepticism refutes the claim.
The problem I’m having isn’t with the fact that consensus emerges in fact. It’s with the idea that consensus is the be all and end all of science. I’m not going to wast time rehashing examples of debunked consensuses of the past, such as phrenology. We’ve all been there and done that.
I think Mosher’s closer to a practical take on all of this. Newtonian mechanics isn’t correct and complete, but it’s close enough to use to design airplanes. It’s a model, and a useful one, as long as you don’t try to use it to analyze lasers. IOW, there are no scientific truths (yet), just useful approximations. We got a lot closer with the the verification of the Higgs, but there’s still a ways to go to the truth. Maybe a long ways. We don’t even know how long a ways.
So the question regarding climate is, do we have useful approximations? That’s what we’re all arguing about. I don’t see how consensus shines any light on that.
Gents, this is a very extended subthread. I earlier
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/13/no-consensus-on-consensus-part-ii/#comment-218913
pointed to a section from Lehrer which, IMO sets the role of consensus in science in its proper light. Much as I admire many the apercus of many of the participants here, I don’t think you have improved on this formulation, or are likely to.
It is not about consensus. Read what Lacis says below. It is much more competitive than that. They try to improve on each other’s results, not merely verify or confirm them. You don’t get published for confirming someone else’s hypothesis unless you find an independent way to do it, or unless you can improve the hypothesis, or if you can disprove it, that is even more interesting from a scientific perspective.
Doing science is not about consensus, but what is scientific knowledge is very much about consensus.
Based on earlier threads I’m pretty sure that David uses that concept in the same spirit as I do.
This is not to the least in contradiction with what Andy Lacis wrote.
Pekka, you posted this the same time as mine, and it looks like agreement on the distinction between the process of science and the results regarding consensus. In scientific terms, consensus is often expressed in review articles or textbooks. The IPCC had to go beyond this normal review format to come up with probabilities to meet its goals to inform policymakers, not just other scientists, on the state of the knowledge.
Yes, Based on the early largely theoretical results of scientists (and also the empirical measurements at Mauna Loa) many people agreed that continuing CO2 emissions may be a major threat for the environment and human well-being. That led to the Rio declaration and to the creation of IPCC. Several scientists were active in all that, but the decisions were made by government representatives.
IPCC got the task to report on the state of science and on the views of scientists. Expecting – or even requiring – recommendations from scientists based an very recent results which should in many cases be considered only preliminary has not unexpectedly turned out to be problematic.
These problems have not necessarily influenced the outcome itself, but they have certainly made it difficult to judge the reliability of the results. Normal scientific processes cannot provide all the answers so fast and in particular the full process of forming the natural scientific consensus does not operate well on this schedule.
“Doing science is not about consensus, but what is scientific knowledge is very much about consensus.
Based on earlier threads I’m pretty sure that David uses that concept in the same spirit as I do.
This is not to the least in contradiction with what Andy Lacis wrote.”
Nor a contradiction with Judith’s article.
Any branch of science has consensus, clarifying rather then asserting
what climate science consensus would be a useful service
It would useful because it should make climate science more productive- more progress will be made.
And progress would obviously includes changing what is regarded as consensus.
So this why IPCC has mostly been damaging- it has slowed progress.
What has been good with regard to IPCC, is it has pissed off people.
It has insulted Science [if Science can be seem as an entity]. And insulting people sometimes motivates them.
But it also seems to me, humans must do things wrong, before they can do anything right.
I am doubtful IPCC can be saved. But if IPCC could be saved, it would a new and wondrous thing, and would be valuable in the pursuit of rescuing many other failing bureaucracies.
I would like to able to think of example of saving bureaucracies, only one I coming to mind is US military. Don’t know if that example helps or would just muddles the issue. I imagine sociologists should study the failure of bureaucracies, and find any turn a rounds which were successful. It should be their sole interest considering the magnitude of the problem.
“Science is about consensus. ”
LOL. No, no, no, no, no.
Science is about repeatable results. One counterexample destroys the theory no matter how much consensus it is. Nature is ALWAYS right no matter how many ‘smart people’ you put in a room that agree with each other.
metro 70, concur, regretfully, with yr state of Oz summary. Now the anti- freedom government alliance is introducing new media laws to limit free speech. .
Beth, after Bill Leak’s Gillard-mocking cartoon this morning, I’ve written to The Australian to advise that it “has proved to be the last straw for the anti-News regulators. A savage Cartoon Tax will be announced imminently.” ;-)
One point that Judy makes is this:
“The mandate of the IPCC is to provide policy‐relevant information to policy makers involved in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Based upon the precautionary principle, the UNFCCC established a qualitative climate goal for the long term: avoiding dangerous climate change by stabilization of the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases. ”
This discusses the origin of the UNFCC:
http://unfccc.int/cop7/issues/briefhistory.html
And the origin of the IPCC which predates the UNFCC
http://www.ipccfacts.org/history.html
This paper discusses the development of the precautionary principle and implies that it was written into the original UNFCC charter in 1992 as a result of Rio 92.
http://www.lumes.lu.se/database/alumni/04.05/theses/rabbi_deloso.pdf
So it appears to me that the precautionary principle was dogma well in advance of the science. The IPCC charter was to “finger” GHG in general and CO2 in particular. Not an auspicious beginning for an organization that defines itself as the definitive interpreter of the science.
Indeed. From the start the whole purpose of the IPCC was simply to “prove” CAGW no matter what, to bolster the leftist/totalitarian argument for more taxes and government, ideally world government.
I would be more inclined to think that in regard to climate science, there really is no need to have consensus on consensus.
The notion that “The climate community has worked for more than 20 years to establish a consensus” struck me as being a somewhat odd perception of what it is that we have been working on.
I have been doing climate research for nearly twice that long, and the term “consensus” was never so much as a consideration. We work to get the science right, not to achieve “consensus”. To be sure, we check to see what kind of results NCAR, GFDL, and others are getting. But that is more to see if they might be doing some climate process better than we are. There has never been any thought that we might ever consider making changes in the GISS climate model that were other than an improvement in model physics, in order to produce results to be in closer agreement with those of GFDL or NCAR, or anybody else.
In short, consensus is no substitute for correctness.
If the climate model physics is being done correctly and accurately enough, then all the different climate modeling groups will be getting similar results. As a result, consensus will eventually be achieved automatically without so much as trying.
Consensus is more a socio-political goal than a scientific objective. Perhaps as Pekka explained it above, the notion of consensus arises when a group of scientists (like the IPCC) is being asked to write a summary of the current scientific understanding of climate science for the benefit of policy makers, and perhaps the general public.
But then, it’s not that policy makers have ever needed consensus to act. While it is no doubt true that “consensus” on some topic can serve as a useful excuse for politicians to proceed and take action, consensus is hardly more than a convenient recommendation when it coincides with a course of action already decided upon, and certainly it is not a prerequisite that is required before action can be taken. Recall that wars have been started on scarcely more than a minimum of flimsy and questionably manufactured evidence.
How many votes are required to get anything sensible done in the US Senate? Is it 51(?), 60(?), 67(?), or 100? There have been times when 99 votes is not enough. But is this any way to run a country? or a business? or anything else for that matter?
Is there then some salient point for seeking (unanimous) ‘consensus’? Or, is there some ‘reasonable’ level of consensus that would suffice? And, if it happens to be some technical topic (say, climate science), should the consensus be sought amongst those with some degree of demonstrated expertise, or, should the sought after consensus be extended to all parties who happen to have expressed some bit of interest in the topic in question?
Was the IPCC AR4 document not a consensus report of the authors who wrote it? Obviously, not everybody in the universe was satisfied with everything that was written in the report. I was very critical about their lack of clearly expressing the unequivocal physical basis for anthropogenic CO2 forcing of the global warming. Others complained by their lack of clearly differentiating the different types of uncertainties in observational data and modeling results. Still others pointed out various errors and omissions. That is the nature of doing science. Hopefully, the IPCC AR5 document will show some improvements as a result of all these criticisms.
However, whether implicitly or inadvertently, to so greatly expand the consensus umbrella as to include the NIPCC (Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report put out by the Heartland Institute, as a comparable document to the IPCC AR4 report, is clearly not going to have the effect of promoting a better understanding of global climate change. I think this will have exactly the opposite effect.
I can see where the news media in their effort to appear objective, but totally lacking in competence to evaluate the scientific merit of the NIPCC versus the IPCC AR4 report, might be tempted to equate the two reports as being comparable and competing views on climate science.
I have looked at the first two chapters of the NIPCC report on global climate models, feedback factors, and radiative forcing. Clueless and less than competent. That would be the grade that describes their level of understanding of climate modeling, climate feedbacks, and radiative forcing.
This 855 page Heartland Institute report may be slick-looking and claims to have the support of 30,000, but it clearly is not worth the $154 that they seek to charge for a copy. Their principal findings, summarized on the back cover, are all erroneous misrepresentations of what we understand about global climate and climate change.
If they really think that they have 30,000 like-minded scientists who agree with their NIPCC conclusions, then by all means, have them all write scientific papers to be published in the scientific literature. We are fully receptive to improving the understanding of climate science.
If our objective is improved understanding of climate science, the upcoming IPCC AR5 report will provide a “consensus” of our current knowledge if the authors of the report are qualified climate scientists. Obviously, the quality of the IPCC report will benefit if the authors clearly identify all those aspects of climate change that are known with rigor and certainty, clearly delineate all those aspects of global climate change that remain uncertain and explain why, place all this in the paleoclimate context.
And be sure to cite all available observational data with all their relevance and limitations, and also point out what observational data are incomplete and are most urgently needed. And, hey, if you happen to spot something that does not appear to fit, or is at odds with conventional wisdom, be especially sure to report that too.
It is high time for us to move on and conclude that we do have the necessary consensus to decide that the Earth is indeed spherical in shape despite the 30,000 or so individuals who still keep insisting that the Earth must still be flat just like it was when it was first created 6016 years ago.
Bottom line – just stick to doing science. Consensus manipulation is the bailiwick of politicians.
@a lacis
‘If the climate model physics is being done correctly and accurately enough, then all the different climate modeling groups will be getting similar results’
Hmm
What a very warped world you must live in if that is your test of ‘correctness’
To everbody outside the world of climate modelling, the real test of whether the modelling is being done correctly is whether the actual pesky climate stuff that occurs outside in the big wide world does what your models say it should.
It doesn’t.
Ergo your models – however much they agree with each other – are wrong.
Real world example. If all 6 tipsters in the Sporting Life agree that Fast Nag will win the 3:00 at Kempton will matter not a jot when Cart Horse romps in by 10 lengths.
You confuse agreement among yourselves with usefulness. The only real test of any science is what the experiments.observations show.
What Lacis described is a competitive process between modeling groups to all represent real-world observations as best they can. They constantly intercompare, evaluate and improve. This competition iterates towards better climate models guided by observations of the climate.
@jim d
‘This competition iterates towards better climate models guided by observations of the climate.’
Weasel words, mon brave, weasel words!
The only true test of the models (or of any scientific theory) is if the experiments/observations agree with the predictions.
‘better models guided by observations’ is such a weak statement as to be worthless.
You know that you cannot say ‘better models that accurately predict future climate’ because they don’t.
Pathetic. But at about the level I expect from climatologists.
Well it’s painfully true that their models badly need improvement.
Consensus in IPCC AR1 (1990) was 0.3C/decade warming.
Actual warming over 33 years from 1999 to 2012 is 0.14C/decade and still falling.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23
FAIL
Umm… 33 years from 1979 to 2012 – my computer keyboard must have screwed up entering a 9 when the 7 key was pressed. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket.
Or perhaps it’s been too long since I applied some conversational heterotextual condoms. So here, have a page.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Hmm, saying a model is “wrong” is trivially true. It’s not really the test we apply to models. All physics is a model. A set of equations that purports to describe how the world works. Some of those equations work really well. They work so well that we call them “laws”. other models, other equations that purport to describe how the world works, are not so accurate. So, the real question is how accurate is your physics, how complete, how reliable. And that question cannot be answered outside the context of action.
If you want to predict sea level rise at 2100, you need a model. That model will have error. which model should you use? and why?
Saying you cant model it, is clearly false because you can and do.
You can’t avoid modelling it. shrugging your shoulders is modelling it.
Steve- Imo you appear to be taking shots at the messenger and avoiding the basic message.
The basic message- The outputs of GCMs are highly unreliable if the goal is to use them as the basis of government policy on the issue of climate change.
The developers of GCMs seem to very rarely clearly state the specific characteristics that their model is designed to forecast within what margin of error over what time frame.
There is no GCM available today that has demonstrated to have sufficiently reliable accuracy so that it can be used to form the basis of government policy 40 to 50 years into the future.
“The basic message- The outputs of GCMs are highly unreliable if the goal is to use them as the basis of government policy on the issue of climate change.”
That’s hardly true. If you tell me that you predict a 1 meter rise in sea level +- 50cm, that can be used as the basis of policy.
ANYTHING can be used as the basis of policy. You might like more reliablity, but you’re not making policy, now are you.
Who decides what is suitable for policy makers? well, policy makers do.
If you dont like that they use GCM with wide error bands.. run for office.
If you tell me in 1990 that anthropogenic CO2 emissions will, if not curtailed, result in 0.3C/decade of surface warming and then in 2012 I review 33 years of global satellite temperature data and find the warming was only 0.14C I must conclude that the method you used to arrive at your erroneous prediction was seriously flawed. The trend is still flat to down so this 0.14C is still falling. As far as I know it may fall to 0.0C/decade before it starts rising again. Or perhaps the effing interglacial is over and it’s going to drop like a stone. The only that’s most assuredly true is the IPCC AR1 consensus was WRONG by a whole bunch and more wrong every additional year that passes.
Steve Mosher—No one who is not an idiot likes models with wide error bands. Wide error bands are simply a method of hiding that the model is poorly designed. Using today’s models for policy purposes that forecast a 1 meter sea level rise by 2100 would be an example of an idiot using a model. For a model that makes such a prediction to be of value it would need to accurately demonstrate the points in time when the rate of change would start to occur.
Mosher
You seem to like to defend absolutely terrible processes for modeling and it is difficult to understand why.
Your reply to Singer includes a bunch of irrelevant garbage.
The actual record of warming over the last few decades is less than 2 C per decade. That is lower than the IPCC forecasted and at that lower rate is much less of a potential problem than was predicted. What is the issue with admitting that fact.
Steve,
Your comment seems to be one of misdirection. Physics models are fine, sometimes even useful however, no one including you has ever shown climate models to be relevant.
Brian, ModelE code is available online. 5 years ago when I had doubts about “the models” ( having spent a number of years in the 80s working on physics models). Gavin was nice enough to point me in the direction of the code. I read through it. I also spent some time with the MIT code.
I will suggest you read some code. You will find that the models embody physical law. Are there places where that understanding is uncertain? yup.
Are the models relevant? that is not a science question. relevant for what and for whom.
How about this irrelevant model…
http://times247.com/articles/arpaio-calls-congress-to-move-on-obama-eligibility
oh, the shame.
Steven,
That was a good way to describe it.
“All physics is a model. A set of equations that purports to describe how the world works. Some of those equations work really well. They work so well that we call them “laws”. other models, other equations that purport to describe how the world works, are not so accurate. So, the real question is how accurate is your physics, how complete, how reliable.”
A climate GCM is a very complicated set of equations, requiring a whole team of guys to make it work. Some sub-sets of those equations are more robust than others. Radiation is one of those sub-sets that can be modeled quite accurately. And since it is radiation that defines the global energy balance of the planet, it then follows that the conservation of energy puts a very strong constraint on what will happen to the global equilibrium surface temperature of the Earth as the level of atmospheric CO2 increases.
So, the prediction of the future rise in global surface temperature is quite robust, affected primarily by future changes in CO2 emissions, accompanying changes in the short lived mix of atmospheric aerosols, and by uncertainties in the rate of heat diffusion into the deep ocean.
Other aspects of climate change, such as changes in regional climate are more uncertain because solution of the relevant equations is more problematic, so the model predictions will exhibit greater statistical fluctuations. The physics needed to describe the breakup of ice sheets is largely missing in GCMs, so the uncertainty in sea level rise will be large. But it is not so much a question of “if”, but one of “when”.
Andy
“Radiation is one of those sub-sets that can be modeled quite accurately. And since it is radiation that defines the global energy balance of the planet, it then follows that the conservation of energy puts a very strong constraint on what will happen to the global equilibrium surface temperature of the Earth as the level of atmospheric CO2 increase”
Yes, long ago I worked with MODTRAN. I spend a lot of time here trying to explain to folks that radiation transfer is known physics.. engineering even, heck it was engineering back in the 80s. Our country is better defended because of this. Explaining this to people is hard.. but we can try
Radiation is a bit player in the troposphere. Lion’s share of surface heat loss by type is latent.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/chapter05_06.htm
So first and foremost we have to look at what happens to convection due to increase in downwelling infrared. Water is quite opaque to longwave infrared and is absorbed in the top few microns of the ocean surface. This actually raises the evaporation rate and cools the water. A skin layer approximately 1-2mm deep on the ocean surface is 1.5C cooler than the water below it. The evaporate water of course is the same temperature as the skin layer and convects upward cooling adiabatically even more until releases the latent energy generally high above the surface at the cloud layer. This quite effectively decreases the effective lapse rate from surface to clouds and increases it commensurately from cloud to tropopause. The net result is little surface heating where evaporation and convection is free to increase which is true the vast majority of the time over the unfrozen ocean surface.
Where we will see a greater effect from an increase in downwelling longwave is where evaporation and convection is limited. This means the energy must be channeled out through the sensible (conduction) path which is much more restrictive than the convective path. Hence we’ll find the most GHG warming where there’s the least liquid water at the surface. In higher latitudes for several months of the year the surface is frozen and evaporation is pretty much halted so it’s all sensible all the time.
This reflects what we actually observe in how global warming is distributed – more over land than over water and more in high latitudes than lower latitudes.
If you deny this you’re either incompetent, deluded, or dishonest, none of which are savory options, Lacis. Which is it?
By the way:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23
33 years of satellite lower troposphere temperature data shows 0.14C/decade of global warming. I’m not the one clutching at straws to explain this. All the actual observations are perfectly reasonable in MY model of global warming. Perhaps if you’re interested in truth instead of agenda and you ask nicely I’ll spoon feed the information to you but you’ll have to promise to stop making faces and spitting it out like a 65-year old infant.
Thanks for playing.
P.S. You’re fired.
Mosher you are evidently ineducable. The troposphere is dominated by latent heat flux no radiative. Until you get that fact through your thick skull you will not even begin to have any understanding of what drives temperature between surface and clouds.
Study this goddam energy budget chapter of an oceanography text until you understand why ever color in every location in every diagram is what it is. I can explain in excrutiating detail why each and every bit of information in all these diagrams is what it is because I understand how and why the fluxes are distributed by kind and location. You on the other hand cannot even understand that latent flux is the dominant mode of heat loss from the planet’s surface. Infukingcredible. You should see if Lacis wants to get a room so you can kiss his ass in private and give it the full attention you think it deserves.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/chapter05_06.htm
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/chapter05_10.htm
There are additional important concepts but for Lacis and Mosher it appears we need to begin at the beginning. I took the introductory course in Physical Oceanography in my sophomore year in college in 1979. I got perfect scores on both midterm and final exams. Evidently Lacis needs to take it over if he took it in the first place and Mosher most assuredly never studied this material at all.
This is really pathetic. Moreso for Lacis and pretty goddam infuriating too since my upper 1% US federal tax payments are contributing more than my fair share of his salary.
Short summary of Physical Oceanography spoonfeeding #1.
Most of the solar energy reaching the earth is absorbed by the tropical ocean. Most of the energy absorbed by the tropical ocean is released by water vapor when it condenses into precipitation.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Radiation isn’t even f*cking mentioned in the first and most important ways energy enters and exits the planetary surface. WRITE THAT DOWN!
Here we have Dave Springer again making seriously false claims on physics, also some right claims but then used to produce totally false conclusions.
Here the first sentence is correct, but the second is not. The only effect that absorbing IR in the skin layer is to warm the skin layer. Worming the skin layer does not cool it. This tells, how nonsensical logic can be presented by people who don’t understand physics.
Warming of the skin layer does increase evaporation, but that can never compensate fully for the warming. Thus the consequence of absorbing more IR is a skin layer that’s a little warmer and a little more evaporation.
The next comment of Dave is again one of the correct ones, the skin is, indeed, cooler than the water below it.
The physics of the skin layer and the atmosphere are complex, it’s not at all surprising that most people have misconceptions about it, but Dave should finally accept that he does not understand much physics and stop making seriously wrong errors after errors on it.
Pekka, the skin of the ocean is a little complicated, but as the skin layer warms it is easier for energy to exit than enter. That is basic physics. To have global average surface temperature that is lower than average SST warm the oceans at anywhere near the same rate as land is physically nonsense. The current “average” sea surface temperature is ~294.25K while the current “average” land temperature is ~276.8K. The oceans warm the land and lose energy to space. If the land warms, the oceans will warm the land less and lose more energy to space. Since H2O is present in greater concentration over the oceans, CO2 will have less impact on the oceans than the land. So the models need a pretty creative method of warming the oceans, especially that jumping the cooling surface mixing layer trick.
Are there people who don’t agree that SST warms more slowly than continental temperatures?
is there anything in that observation that would tell that Dave understands any physics. When he picks bits and pieces from various sources some of them are unavoidably right, but when he puts them together he fails every time.
Pekka, If I wanted a computer, I would call Dave, but to balance a fairly complex fluid dynamics problem, I would call me. What Dave was attempting to communicate is there are several paths of heat flow from the ocean’s surface. The atmospheric paths includes radiant, conductive and latent. The path to the deep ocean is limited to conduction and its little buddy diffusion. Conduction and diffusion in the oceans have a sink temperature magically stabilized by the temperature of the heat of fusion of water. Different substances, different thermal properties, different physics and radiant modeling of the ocean thermodynamics is wonderfully futile.
So the point is, not only do the oceans warm more slowly than the land, they also limit the amount of total warming possible, as long as there is ice, liquid water and water vapor.
Pekka, BTW, My model starts with the liquid water moist air envelope because that is what is required to have a model that works on a world 70% covered with water and moist air. I know you don’t think in terms of envelopes, but since energy content expands the open water area of the oceans and the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the moist air envelope, i.e. volume, it is not only a physically sound approach, it is nearly the only approach.
So I do recommend you think outside of the box and inside the envelope :)
Capt.Dallas,
You may find something that you like in Dave’s random picks, but he has made explicit errors in practically all his comments on physics and mostly on points important for his argument. That’s worse than your vagueness, which may allow for something right in your way of looking at the issues. Compared to most other physicists who have written here I’m more ready to accept that there are different ways of looking at the same physics.
While I do allow for the possibility of different valid ways for looking at the physics I don’t accept outright errors. The basic theories of physics are on solid grounds, but they don’t always offer best approaches for understanding the behavior of complex systems. When simplifications are needed one view seldom tells everything that can be understood but one way of simplifying is good for something and another for something else. On this basis I don’t exclude that you have something in your approach – but I’m not convinced either on its validity.
Rather vague verbal descriptions and drawings are not enough, more is needed to make even the best approach useful.
Most skeptics don’t value the concept of using extremes and limiting behavior to understand physics. Springer tries to pull a fast one by ignoring the fact that directing an infrared source (i.e. a flame) at a pot of water will make it hot enough to boil. Watch how he tries to manipulate the reader into thinking that the heat goes into evaporating the water and thus cooling it. I actually find it humorous to read the sleight of hand that goes into the deceptive arguments that the word salad chefs use to convince gullible skeptics. Can’t beat this kind of entertainment, brought to you by Sergeant Springer and the Captains (Kangaroo and Bonefish).
WHT,
One common error is to refer to the difficulty of heating water by IR from above. That’s very slow unless some mixing is introduced to get the heat move downwards more rapidly than through conduction. Dave does, however, do that error as he tells correctly that the surface is cooler. Getting this much correct makes a bit more surprising that he doesn’t accept the logical consequences:
– the surface is warmed and it’s temperature raised (although not very much)
– that slows down the transfer of heat from the layers below to the surface leaving thus a little more of the heat from solar SW to warm those layers.
Pekka,
These guys don’t understand that eddy diffusion is a kind of diffusion even though the word “diffusion” is built right into the description. This is all a kind of Alice in Wonderland playground to them where they think they can convince any gullible joe blow of anything they want.
Webster, Eddy diffusion or turbulent mixing is just part of nature. How much change in energy transfer there will be due to an additional 3.7Wm-2 of impedance at a effective radiant layer in the atmosphere on the near laminar fluid layers in the oceans, with respect to the turbulent exchange in the atmosphere is a valid consideration. Since we are not talking about new blow torch stimulating the change but one more 3.7 W red light bulb in a 110 light bulb array, it is a little different problem doncha know :)
Captain actually thought that the GHG effect was supposed to cause the oceans to boil? Not exactly. The extra infrared will cause a monotonic heat retention which will raise the average temperature of the ocean.
Webster, I did not say the oceans were going to boil or that montonic retention of heat due to changing the CO2 concentration would not have an impact. I said the impact would vary and the one extra bulb in the 110 bulb array is an example what change you can expect, a rather small change.
Water is one of the reasons that change will be small.
Web : Most skeptics don’t value the concept of using extremes and limiting behavior to understand physics
A fine piece of fiction prose.
Call the skeptics on it and see how they change their tune. Of course the GHG effect is only a few degrees out of the 300 in absolute Kelvin the earth normally fluctuates about. Yet Captain tries to have his cake and eat it by marginalizing the effect, yet nor having the courage or talent to quantify the effect through a step-by-step analysis where we can check his numbers. Word salad seems to be his means of dialectic argumentation. Spare me with these clowns.
Webster said, “Yet Captain tries to have his cake and eat it by marginalizing the effect, yet nor having the courage or talent to quantify the effect through a step-by-step analysis where we can check his numbers.”
The actual impact of a doubling of CO2 really depends on what the initial temperature should be. If I assume the GISSTEMP or the others are accurate and use the 1951-1980 baseline is average, I get approximately 1.5C at the tropopause and ~ 1 C at the surface. But there is no good way to estimate longer term feed backs.
However, using SST and non alpine paleo reconstructions like this, https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rRs69Ekl9Zc/T_7kMjPiejI/AAAAAAAAChY/baz0GHWEGbI/s917/60000%2520years%2520of%2520climate%2520change%2520plus%2520or%2520minus%25201.25%2520degrees.png
I find this oddly familiar curve shape in the midst of the noise.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
That plot is of the HADSST2 but the values are in Wm-2 based on an average SST of 294.25K using a 2003 to 2010 baseline because that is the reference value I am using because of the AQUA data that is available.
Having an “average” SST of 294.25K, that reduces my estimated sensitivity to 0.8C because the 1951-1980 baseline used in GISSTEMP is lower than what “average” should be for the bulk of the surface, the oceans based on what appears to be the approach to one of the two bi-stable set points of Earth’s climate.
Since I would really need to wait about 4 to 5 years to see how the next solar cycle impacts SST, I am “playing” with a non-linear thermodynamic model that is frankly a real bitch to completely write up until it is completed.
You have already expressed your disbelief that e^-t/RC might be the shape of the curve as a layer of the ocean approaches a capacity limit, you really wouldn’t care to see if there is a limit as you have already determined that heat will continue to flow into the oceans based on your assumed initial conditions in spite of the fact the the rate of ocean heat uptake in the upper mixing level is decreasing.
So convincing you that you might want to consider that water does provide an upper horn on the energy saddle would be more difficult that finishing the non-linear thermodynamic model :)
Captain, you are bluffing, and doing it badly. You have no calculations to show and nothing for someone to crosscheck against. I know the type, the guys with the fish stories and the big one that got away
Webby
Yeah, the Big One has even been given a name – “The Missing Heat”.
No, I was referring to Cap’n Bonefish, he of the type that claims his computer overheats when he tries to do his sophisticated computations.
Ah, Trenberth’s Big Heat That Got Away :-)
So, as Roger Pielke, Sr. described it, GCM’s are engineering style models, subject to the problems of engineering- how to interpret the physics into reality. How cowardly and irresponsible the consensus promoters are to dismiss skeptics as unscientific for doubting the conclusions of the apocalyptic clap trap of the consensus.
Sort of like how to account for clouds or water and ice, as well as humidity. And how to account for the paradox of a warming ocean releasing CO2 yet “acidifying” and how the shallow turbulent layer at the surface drives heat hundreds of meters down.
Webster said, “Captain, you are bluffing, and doing it badly. You have no calculations to show and nothing for someone to crosscheck against. I know the type, the guys with the fish stories and the big one that got away.”
There is no bluffing to it Web, initial conditions have to be be considered. If current ocean heat capacity is normal, climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing should be calculated from this ocean heat content. The Earth does have a bi-stable control range that produces natural variability, that natural “noise” has to be considered to determine CO2 impact. Total Antropogenic impact would be different and more regional than global.
That does not change any of the atmospheric physics, it does change the rate of diffusion of CO2 warming into the oceans. With the ocean aveage temperature at 294.25K S-B equivalent 425 Wm-2, the most surface impact 3.7Wm-2 of additional insulation can produce at that surface would be 7.4Wm-2 at that average surface energy, 432.5Wm-2 which yields 295.5K or 1.25 degrees, all things remaining equal. CO2 though is not a perfect insulator. Latent, convection and atmospheric window radiant flux would increase with additional forcing in the CO2 spectrum, that is ~83.5 Wm-2 latent, 27Wm-2 convective and 35.5Wm-2 radiant window versus 67Wm-2 radiant flux impacted by GHGs at the ocean surface. Pressure broadening may impact some portion of the 35.5Wm-2 atmospheric window, but both the 83.5 and 27 Wm-2 for latent and convection will increase which reduces the impact of CO2 at the surface by 50% +/- a few percent.
You can check that by looking at the warming by latitude.
To prove that beyond any doubt is impossible, though in 4 to 5 years when ocean heat uptakes goes negative, it will be easier to infer.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
SST decay curve is a pretty good clue.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/MBLmodelversusAQUASSTandCh-6.png
Using AQUA SST versus tropopause provides a nice little Wattmeter to watch the imbalance change.
With the current ocean imbalance ~0.3Wm-2 and decreasing plus current the TOA imbalance of ~0.5 and decreasing, there is a little more circumstantial evidence, but not enough to sway the convictions of a true “believer”. One would actually have to be curious to see the truth.
Pekka you say that by cooling the skin layer the layers below are prevented from transferring heat upward.
This is nonsense. As the water is evaporated from the skin layer the layer below it BECOMES the new skin layer. Water is being REMOVED – peeled off the top like a paring knife shaving an apple.
Duh. You REALLY need to put more thought into things before you write them down. Or maybe less thought. I’m not sure if you’re underthinking or overthinking. Whichever it is it’s the wrong amount.
Cap’n,
Yea, so you like to throw the chum out there to lure in the gullible skeptics who are actually impressed by that approach. The problem is that chum, like word salad, is not very substantial and does not pass any kind of scientific integrity test.
Webster, “Cap’n,
Yea, so you like to throw the chum out there to lure in the gullible skeptics who are actually impressed by that approach. The problem is that chum, like word salad, is not very substantial and does not pass any kind of scientific integrity test.”
there is no chum, chum :) The Earth is not a billiard ball floating in space. It has a surface 70% covered in salt water with different salinity at different thermal layers. Each layer would have its own thermal capacity or thermal inertial it you like. Sensitivity would be dependent on the response of each layer to forcing.
Like I said, it is a waste to time talking to a “believer”, all you get is insult when you challenge their “faith”.
Poor David Springer who can’t admit to the fact that water will get hot when heated. He can’t admit to it because he wants to lure in these gullible skeptics with his carefully crafted word salad.
Entertain me with your deep analytical skills Cap’n. Start with some formulations of the first order and see how far you can go with it.
I don’t think you will get anywhere. You have always been a poseur when it comes to science and I don’t see how that is going to change.
@steven mosher
‘If you want to predict sea level rise at 2100, you need a model. That model will have error. which model should you use? and why?’
I think that I’d start with one that had a reasonable track record of getting it right over 5 years, then 10, then 25.That would at least show that it had some skill. And the results presented like that might have some chance of persuading the general public…who ultimately are the guys paying for all of this, that it hasn’t all been a complete waste of time and effort.
But you say – from your great academic height – that such trivial stuff like ‘is it any good at forecasting the future? is ‘not really the test we apply to models’. You wander off into some theoretical arguments about ‘completeness’ and ‘reliability’.
Returning to my previous example, it matters not a jot how complete and reliable the process of the fans of Fast Nag was. They got it wrong and Cart Horse won.
Climate modelling has so far shown no results at all that come anywhere making accurate (as compared with subsequent observations) about the real world. It may be as academically complete and reliable as you like, but it is no good at prediction.
I would use actual observation of temperature rise over past 33 years of 0.14C/decade and calculate the ocean volume expansion you’d get if the ocean absorbed it all and rose 1.23C in temperature by 2100 which would presume we can keep growing CO2 emission enough to sustain this rate of warming which is a highly questionable assumption as it presumes that after another 88 years of R&D we won’t have managed to invent a carbon neutral energy source. This is also highly unlikely IMO as we’re pretty close to a synthetic biology breadthrough that will allow us to efficiently and cheaply store solar energy in chemical bond energy in hydrocarbon compounds (i.e. synthetic gasohol, diesel, and Jet-A which can power all our internal combustion engines without little or no modification and fuel the boilers in our steam turbine electrical generators.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23
IPCC AR4 gives 0.5m sea level rise per 1C temperature rise from thermal expansion. So we get 1.23 * 0.5 = 0.6m rise by 2100. Sea level rise due to ice melt is generally considered to be about equal to thermal expansion so my prediction, if we can keep up the acceleration in the pace of anthropogenic CO2 emission is 1.2m sea level rise by 2100.
This is actually about twice the IPCC AR4 prediction which probably reflects the fact that the atmosphere doesn’t warm the ocean and it’s near impossible that 1.23C in surface warming of the atmosphere will reflect a 1.23C warming of the entire bulk of the ocean.
So I’ll just go ahead and agree with IPCC AR4 and say 12-18 inches of sea level rise by 2100. So we have to deal with slightly more than a tenth of an inch rise in sea level per annum. Oh worry worry…
Steven Mosher | July 15, 2012 at 5:14 pm | Reply
“Hmm, saying a model is “wrong” is trivially true”
Was it physically painful for you to say that?
Truth is like pregancy. There’s no such thing as trivially pregnant. It is or it isn’t. It’s binary situation. The state can be encoded in a single bit.
Write that down.
“Hmm, saying a model is “wrong” is trivially true”
This is not a pipe
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/MagrittePipe.jpg
re; models by disparate groups in agreement but still wrong
I think I’ll take this opportunity to coin a new phrase for computer software developers to keep handy. The phrase Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) is well known.
I propose Groupthink In, Groupthink Out. This presents a problem in that the 4-letter acronym is identical. How can we remedy that problem?
Andy, I see that you do not approve of the American system of government. Good to know. Perhaps you favor technocracy? In any case the NIPCC report is a fine presentation of the counter arguments to what you believe, which is no doubt why you think they are incompetent. Unlike you I take both sides seriously.
Merging the IPCC and NIPCC reports would make a credible assessment, except for the vast budget differences.
I would favor technocracy but that still excludes Lacis. He’s a paper-generating ass clown not a technologist. Technologists produce things like, for example, space shuttles. Stuff that’s different in kind from narratives in trade journals with an inbred group of peers approving of and encouraging the production of even more similarly useless narratives. It’s difficult to believe that taxpayers are getting shaken down for the salaries of these just-so story tellers. I don’t mind paying for the real science that NASA does even though it is but a pale pathetic reflection of that which was done by the original cadre of Nazi rocket scientists and engineers caged from Germany in 1944 before the Russians could kidnap them… but still there is some useful if hugely overpriced science still coming out of the devolved remnants of NASA’s golden years. Heck even as recently as late spring of 1978 I was working with NOAA in Norman, Oklahoma launching radiosondes into approaching supercells and that was good basic research trying to better tornado warning time but that organization too has developed an internal rot that compels it to do bad science in support of some misplaced ideology in the upper echelons.
David,
Yet Andy has the gall to attribute political motives to everyone else, while denying his own.
Just part of what a spoiled government worker and wannabe petty tyrant would want to do: Bite the hand that feeds, and dream of being a Platonic philosopher king.
But Lacis is in good company with his great vision:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_king
@lurker
This is the same gall at the heart of the whole alarmist enterprise. The major driving force (and funds) of alarmism is political, and alarmism is what put politics into the climate debate in the first place. Alarmists then pretend this has not happened, and try to pin the blame for politics on those who respond to the unadmitted politics of the alarmists.
A Lacis
It is all recovery from the little ice age => http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd
AGW is not supported by the data as the same warming existed before mid-20th century.
What?
To A Lacis:
Your attempt to disavow any use by the CAGW scientific community of its claims of ‘consensus’, to keep politicians and governments on your ‘correct’ message and steer them to the ‘correct’ policies , is disingenuous.
It belies real life experience around the world, and certainly in my country.
When challenged , no matter on what front—-the only—only—reason given for the Australian government’s policy of ‘complete transformation’ of the Australian economy with their recent introduction of the across-the economy 23% carbon tax in Australia ahead of the world—is the all-powerful ‘scientific consensus’.
The reason the Australian government’s handpicked Climate Commissioners give for shutting down dissent , and very reasonable questions from the Australian citizens they’re sent out to ‘educate’ on CAGW —-and their reason given for stating as they routinely do that ‘the debate is over’, and ‘the science is settled’ —–is that that is the consensus of thousands of climate scientists around the world—and the remark sometimes is that it’s been settled ‘for decades’.
And now, largely to protect this very real nexus between government and CAGW scientists—the convenient ‘consensus’ they both hide behind—this Labor government is trying to nobble the only news organisation in the country—News Limited [Murdoch]—that’s trying to give the Australian people both sides of this and other issues.
How useful ‘move on’ and the ‘flat earther’ and other epithets are for climate scientists , in their attempts to divert attention while whole populations have their lives turned inside out and damaged by the CAGW juggernaut.
But it won’t wash, as we see you blame governments, even while they’re citing you as the consensus of experts informing their dodgy policies that threaten to sabotage economies and lives—each of you hiding behind the other’s skirts.
A Lacis
Exactly. The very fact that anyone needs to claim there is a consensus, proves that there isn’t one.
Bottom line – just stick to doing science. Consensus manipulation is the bailiwick of politicians.
And of course politically-funded scientists – who hide data, hide the decline, redefine peer-review, and so on.
Andy,
You said
“It is high time for us to move on and conclude that we do have the necessary consensus to decide that the Earth is indeed spherical in shape despite the 30,000 or so individuals who still keep insisting that the Earth must still be flat just like it was…”
Andy, did you make up the 30,000 flat earther figure ?.
The IPCC consensus is based on high school radiation physics, a fairy tale. The reason is Houghton’s treatise has serious mistakes. You cannot treat the atmosphere as a black or grey body and the two-stream approximation breaks down at boundaries. You must also consider band structure and its dynamic effect on emissivity/absorptivity, unfinished work for Planck.
Anyone who has done analytical chemistry knows the spectroscopic phenomenon of ‘self-absorption’, absorption of internally-generated EM energy by unexcited molecules. CO2 in air is well into that mode at ~200 ppm.
Illuminate the lower atmosphere with IR energy in the 4 and 14 micron bands and it excites CO2 molecules that would normally absorb thermal radiation from above. That increases DOWN emissivity so more IR in those bands arrives at the Earth’s surface. This switches off the states which, when activated by kinetic energy, would emit that radiation. I call this Prevost Exchange, there may be other names.
The same applies to all the other GHGs so much IR emission from the Earth is shifted to the ‘atmospheric window’, total GHE settles at a constant level determined by water vapour mainly and there can be NO CO2-AGW. The present computer models are a waste of resources.
This pseudo-science is an indictment of ‘consensus’.
Word salad of the scientific variety.
You wouldn’t know any radiation physics even if it did bite you on the bum.
Sorry, but you are a waste of space IMHO.
Do you believe the satellite images you see are accurate?
Do you accept the physics used to derive them?
Let’s be absolutely clear here. The two- stream approximation used in physics and by me as an engineer to solve practical radiation problems works fine so long as you understand that it changes at boundaries, you must have an energy balance and at ambient temperature, 1 atm, radiation in always much less than convection.
The IPCC Energy Budget fails because it assumes TOA DOWN emissivity =1 when it’s zero [fix the IR physics for this].and you can’t turn round the 333 W/m^2 ‘back radiation’ to oppose it leaving 94.5 W/m^2 ,magically generated from thin air!
These guys have worked out the same: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
See Eq. 17.
First: The equation (17) is for a highly unrealistic one-layer model of the atmosphere, which is used in the tutorial to make one point. It’s not an equation applicable to the real atmosphere.
Second: IPC Energy Budget does nopt assume TOA down emissivity of 1, nothing even remotely of such a claim.
Your comment has nothing to do with any reality. You seem to have misunderstood everything that you write about.
I have seen people quote the same DOWN IR as IR to space at TOA: that is by definition emissivity =1. I could be wrong in that another DOWN IR flux is used. if so, please inform me where and I will correct my statement.
Certainly, they use emissivity = 1 at BOA for lower atmosphere emissivity [333 W/m^2 = black body S-B for 3.7 deg. C], and that is what Houghton claims on p 11 of his treatise.
I have no idea of people you have seen or what kind of misunderstandings you have on what people present, but certainly no climate scientist would propose that.
The surface emissivity is high for IR, not exactly one but not far from it.
Spartacusisfree or mydogsgotnonose or whatever sockpuppet name you are using, try to write up a complete analysis without referring to an argument by authority. You are either a poseur or not, and the latter is highly unlikely.
Spartacus: read everything on this website http://scienceofdoom.com/ then come back.
Spartacusisfree | July 15, 2012 at 3:36 pm |
Such exciting developments.
Could you present some citations to allow us to learn more of this analytical chemistry information? I’ve done a little past the high school level, and always find new developments exciting.
Also, WHT’s been meticulous about presenting his math; could you do likewise?
Equations, if you would.
He, and others, have also listed sources of observations and experimental studies, in their claims. Could you do likewise?
Because if this turns out to be just another G&T fanboy Skydragon adventurist fiasco, I want to know early.
See any book on analytical spectroscopy for ‘self-absorption’. This paper describes real CO2 data from metallurgical sources: http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/agw-an-alternate-look-part-1-details-c.pdf
The rest is being independently developed by me and by Claes Johnson. In essence, Prevost Exchange [qv] is the temperature radiation field of the cooler body in equilibrium with the warmer body. It’s what a pyrometer views. Pyrometers have a shield behind the detector so produce an artificial signal [which is why the pyrgeometer data in Trenberth et. al. Energy Budget are not real energy fluxes, so that Energy Budget is imaginary].
This radiation field interacts with the emission sites on the warmer body. These sites [e.g. the activated GHG molecules in air] are the translator between kinetic energy and EM energy. There are 4 rate equations and incoming IR competes for these sites with incoming kinetic energy.
So, if you increase the emissivity of the atmosphere by reducing the number of inactivated GHG molecules, it reduces the emissivity of the earth’s surface. That in turn causes its temperature to increase and IR emission from other bands to increase.
The maths is fairly complex but in simple terms, for any GHG, if you illuminate that gas with the same or greater IR flux from the other direction, you switch the self-absorption off. This increases the thermal flux up to the level without self-absorption, an effective rise in temperature of the emitter in that band. The higher Prevost Exchange flux gives the reduction in emissivity in that band of the earth’s surface.
This physics is of course based on the net flux as the only real energy transfer. The Trenberth cartoon is completely wrong in assuming emissivities =1 for the surface and the atmosphere. In reality, these are dynamic, falling to zero at equal temperature. These people never studied radiation physics and imagine you can just use S-B without realising the complexity under the hood.
My conclusions are that this is the real GHE mechanism but you also have to include cloud effects, an additional complexity. Another view is that this is how Miskolczi’s thermodynamic approach actually operates on the ground!
Some phenomena are true but insignificant in many cases. What you are discussing belongs to those phenomena when the issue is radiative heat transfers in the Earth system. Your comments may contain also something that’s not true at all, but that’s not essential. What is essential is that none of it has any practical relevance for the Earth system except for the extremely thin atmosphere in higher parts of stratosphere and above.
The reason for the irrelevance is that the more complex forms of interaction of radiation with matter become relevant only in extreme situations, where the best known case is that of lasers. For those intensities that we meet in the Earth system each interaction of one photon with matter has plenty of time to “thermalize” with the motion of surrounding molecules atoms and electrons in case of conductors.
Using the Maxwell equations and other equations of non-quantum mechanics further before introducing quantum mechanics is a productive approach in studying lasers and other phenomena where very strong electromagnetic fields are present. That’s, however, waste of time when the fields are weak as the standard approach works extremely well in these cases. If the more complex methods give different results for these phenomena then the complexity has led to some error in the derivation. The approaches are, after all, equivalent and must give the same results. Therefore the simpler one for each problem is the one to use to avoid pointless work and to avoid the additional risk of errors.
The heat transfer in the IPCC Energy Budget is laughably wrong. Explaining all the reasons would take a long time. However, concentrating on the surface, it’s because you can only apply the S-B equation to an isolated body in a vacuum. In the atmosphere, convection and radiation are coupled and net radiative flux from the surface to the atmosphere can only exceed the convective heat loss at >~100 deg. C for emissivity = 0.9. Look it up in ‘McAdams Heat Transfer’.
As applied to the GHE, I am introducing the concept that the thermal radiation from atmosphere to surface in an IR band must increase over the isolated level because thermal emission in the opposite direction activates the GHG molecules which would otherwise absorb thermal IR in the opposite direction: the maths is simple.
You may consider this thermal radiation as ‘back radiation’. However, you must realise that for a cooler atmosphere, none of it can do any thermodynamic work. Its purpose is to be absorbed by emission sites at the surface thus switching them off. Johnson explains this by unintelligible maths. I use the term ‘Prevost Exchange’. Emissivity is dynamic and at equal temperatures goes to zero.
So, the extra flux from the atmosphere arriving at the surface for a finite temperature difference means surface emissivity in that band falls. You may interpret this as an extra resistance to overall IR from Earth to Space, but that hides the deduction that the increase in temperature of the earth’s surface due to the GHE is because its integrated emissivity decreases hence you need higher temperature to drive the set flux to space.
BTW, the IPCC Energy Budget increases that IR flux by an entirely artificial 400%.
you’re full of sh1t spartacus
The IPCC Energy Budget is provably wrong. It is amateur. But when I decided to look at the detail only last week, I was astonished to find where it led me, an entirely new insight into what the GHE really means.
You may call this sh1t, I call it an apparently very-astounding scientific revelation.
1 ) It’s not essential whether the net radiative flux from the surface exceeds the convective heat loss. Actually the net radiative energy flux is towards the surface on the average as it includes solar SW as well. Excluding solar SW it may be more or less than convection depending on the conditions that have a large effect on convection as well.
2 ) As I wrote in my previous comment because nothing like the following claim occurs:
The above claim is totally without basis. The Prevost Exchange is not a true physical phenomenon. Some energy fluxes cancel as fluxes but incoming radiation does not affect emission to a degree of any relevance.
1. I’m transferring the idea from other [analytical] radiation systems.
2. The problem people have in understanding radiative energy transfer comes from Prevost himself and in meteorology the use of single pyrgeometers when to measure real energy flux, you need two, back to back; http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx
[see bottom of page].
So, I have created the concept of the intermediate quantum density of states of which GHG molecules are a very good example, able to accept and emit EM energy and also able to accept and transfer kinetic energy [by an indirect route]. This means 4 rate equations.
Thus the purpose of the radiation energy you measure from a colder body in radiative equilibrium with a warmer body is via one of those rate equations to compete with the quantum density of states at the other body. This in turn defines its operational emissivity.
Some physicists refer to a ‘photon gas’ from the cooler body. In no circumstance can this ever do thermodynamic work because by definition, if a body is warmer, more photons are produced from internal kinetic energy that incoming EM energy from the colder body. Planck was getting there when he invented the concept of the photon, but he didn’t like it.
The idea of ‘back radiation’ as an energy source is totally wrong.and it’s easily proved. Put a back to back pyrgeometer pair in zero temperature gradient and net signal = 0. Take one away and you measure ~300 W/m^2 because that’s the signal coming in one direction which is exactly offset by the same signal in the opposite direction. in reality the emissivity of each half of the system is zero.
That’s a powerful concept, variable emissivity. Fixed emissivity only applies to an isolated body in a vacuum.
Spartacus,
As you don’t present anything precisely it’s not possible to know fully your arguments or comment the validity of your equations.
I wrote already in my previous comment that there are energy fluxes that cancel partially each other. That’s exactly what is used in pyrgeometers. Up to this point there doesn’t seem to be any disagreement. I don’t know about Prevost, but it seems reasonable to assume that he considered this same point that we agree on.
A new concept like the “intermediate quantum density of states” raises doubts but not knowing what you mean by that that’s all that I can say. The same is true for the new concept of “operational emissivity”.
The further chapters appear to be confused remarks with no clear meaning and without justification. What you say about emissivity is not true for the concept of physics known generally as emissivity. What’s their relationship with your own “operational emissivity” is impossible to say, because the text is unintelligible.
Emissivity is the quotient of the radiative flux emitted by a body in a given wavelength interval to that from a black body, same temperature, same wavelengths.
The radiative flux from the cooler body absorbed by the hotter body is exactly offset by the same energy flow in the opposite direction. Only net energy moves from kinetic energy in the hotter body to kinetic energy in the cooler body.
When the bodies have the same temperature, Prevost Exchange reduces the emissivity of both bodies to zero by ensuring that on average the arriving EM energy equals the arriving kinetic energy and the kinetic energy that leaves equals the EM energy that leaves, hence no net heat transfer to the EM domain: 4 rate equations.
For a gas with self-absorption of radiation from the minority GHG molecules, if you excite the GHG molecules from the outside by the same IR band energy, lower self-absorption probability means higher IR flux in the opposite direction expressed for the original temperature.
This is valid because another mistake by climate science is to assume direct thermalisation to O2/N2 kinetic energy when there is no easy direct mechanism. The more likely mechanism is pseudo-scattering whereby simultaneous, random, thermal emission transfers the energy elsewhere meaning no local kinetic energy rise.
So, UP CO2-band IR makes the lower atmosphere behave more like a black body, higher Prevost Exchange, and emission sites at the surface are switched off making its emissivity fall. This has to be proved experimentally, but the logic is clear. Variable emissivity/absorptivity from external radiation is well-known in other areas.
Correct for a body. For gas some additional considerations are needed.
Correct
Why are you willing to redefine the concept of emissivity. In the normal practice the emissivity is a property of the body and independent of the presence of the other body. Your approach makes everything more complex without changing the results.
I’m not sure, what’s your precise definition of self-absorption. The paragraph is obscure in other ways as well and seems to be wrong. Being more prcise is not possible because I don’t understand what you mean.
Thermalisation trough molecular collisions is by a factor of 1000 – 10000 the dominant result of absorption or IR radiation. All other outcomes are so rare that they can be safely dismissed.
Again something that doesn’t make sense.
Where is the experimental proof of direct thermalisation of absorbed IR energy in dilute GHG mixtures in air? Nahle recently used a Mylar balloon, 1/12 th thickness of a PET bottle wall, and observed no detectable heating. I want this experiment to be redone with a different temperature measurement to be sure, but it suggests indirect thermalisation: http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com/images/PDFs/BERTHOLD-KLEIN.pdf
Will Happer warned in 1993 that the assumption of direct thermalisation was wrong. The indirect mechanism is likely because of the Gibbsian Principle off Indistinguishability which means molecules in large numbers have no memory.
That means LTE is restore by the random emission of the same IR quantum from an already thermally activated molecule. The idea that 1000 collisions gets rid of the energy is forbidden by quantum exclusion.
The physical mechanisms that are involved in absorption of radiation are well known and throughly tested by innumerable laboratory experiments.
When a vibrationally exited CO2 molecule collides with any other molecule it’s very likely that it will release the energy of the excitation, which then goes to the kinetic energy of the two molecules. The time between collisions is very short. There is time for many collisions before anything else is likely to happen for the excitation. Therefore through collisions thermalization is the only significant mechanism.
You should read less nonsense if you wish to learn something. There’s no limit on the level of falsehood in the information that you can find from the net if you accept anything. You seem to have found the place that is wrong with one of the highest certainties of all sources.
Concerning that claim that is supposed to be by Will Happer. That claim is nonsense. It’s difficult to believe that any competent physicist would make such a claim, and that includes well known ardent skeptics. The principles listed in the claim have no effects of the nature on thermalization.
Pekka,
“Thermalisation trough molecular collisions is by a factor of 1000 – 10000 the dominant result of absorption of IR radiation. ”
Please show me a real experiment that proves this statement, that was not conducted within an IR-reflective chamber.
What you are saying is that IR absorbing/emitting gases are nearly completely unable to emit.
blouis,
Physics is a well established science based an a huge number of experiments and theories confirmed by those experiments. All the measurements of spectroscopic properties of gases are at the same time also verifications of the theory.
The line widths of individual peaks of the IR spectra are determined by the life times of the exited states (the line width is inversely proportional to the life time). For pressures in the range of the troposphere collisions between molecules determine the life time and the the line width is determined by so called pressure broadening (the name is based on the fact that collisions get more frequent with increasing pressure). Thus every measurement of the line widths is a measurement of the time that it takes to thermalize the excitation through collisions. If you wish you can find papers on the empirical determination of CO2 line widths in the atmosphere, those are the experiments you ask for – but I doubt whether you did understand what I wrote here.
When you finish your equations please calculate the watts seen on the ground by a aircraft flying at 50K in full afterburner. Standard atmosphere, clear sky. and then do the same for the tropics. I’ll compare your answer to working engineering, and let you know how wrong you are.
No problem: the radiator is at a higher temperature and you can use the standard radiation transfer calculations in which I am not an expert.
However, I am considering the first few metres above the ground where most IR is absorbed and pointing out that self-absorption in GHGs has not been considered. The deduction that the GHE is from a reduction of surface emissivity may be controversial, but seems logical!
As for the CO2-AGW argument, the fact is that if you double the concentration from late ice age ~200 ppmv to the present ~400 ppmV does not increase the absorptivity at ambient temperature was surprising at first,but led me to thinking more deeply. I am quite willing to accept i may be wrong, but it has to be proved to me.
“The rest is being independently developed by me and by Claes Johnson.”
‘Nuff said.
Sorry I wasted my time again even responding.
Spartacusisfree, do you think an IR absorbing/emitting gas is able to:
a. absorb more IR than it emits and then heat up more than its surroundings?
b. result in net emission from cooler to warmer?
Empirical experimental evidence?
(a) at steady state no!
(b) at steady state no!
I thought that (a) was the phenomenon thought by AGW defenders to be responsible for the “greenhouse effect” – IR absorbing gases absorb IR and therefore heat. (personally still looking for anyone who can show me experimenal proof.)
Because CO2 is well into the self-absorption mode at 200 ppm in a long optical path, so absorptivity does not increase with concentration, on a cursory examination, there can be no CO2-AGW. However, the band IR suppression argument given above reinforces the argument.
As for cold heating warm, can’t happen ever without an external energy source – 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The problem is those who thought up this argument, led by Aarhenius, have got it wrong. Aarhenius was blasted for his mistake by Bohr and Angstrom.
blouis79,
According to the main stream atmospheric physics the atmosphere emits more IR at all altitudes than it absorbs. Thus your assumption abut the views is false already on this point. The mechanism of GHE is not there and that’s well known.
Replying for Blouis, that’s probably because the main stream models build in imaginary energy, a perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind. Thiis from the assumption of DOWN TOA emissivity =1, wrong when there is mainly indirect thermalisation of IR. Then you don’t need all this ‘back radiation’ nonsense at BOA to try and get an energy balance leaving 40% excess!
When I was taught physics, no-one said you could have perpetual motion machines so I presume they still can’t exist! Of course Mann and Jones might have invented one by now for all I know…..;o)
The problem is the meteorologists with their ‘downwelling LW’ they imagine they measure with pyrgeometers. Epic Fail.
Spartacus,
You seem to have some serious misunderstandings of the main stream theories of the atmosphere. They include nothing even remotely similar to what you write.
Why should i copy others when i think they’re wrong? If they are right then they’ll be able to prove me wrong by experiment. Until that time I’ll continue my merry way.
[I have more patents than my age which is SS and have covered more science than most, which is why, just like any professional, i am horrified at the mistakes in climate science, based as it is on a perpetual motion machine from incorrect heat transfer. I also have a good idea when an attempt is being made to fool me, so be very careful.]
Pekka, the mechanism of the GHE is as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernell. There is not one clear statement of an experimentally verifiable physical mechanism from anybody.
The IR absorption experiments have been conducted in IR reflective chambers, in which IR added to gases within such chambers have warmed – a no brainer, but does not prove that IR absorbing/emitting gases can warm up.
OTOH. It is a no-brainer to understand that a thermally isolated earth with *no* sunlight and no atmosphere would be warmer at surface than now. Isothermal earth is heated from the core. It is the role of IR emission from earth to lose surface heat, which makes it cool enough for life to exist. Incoming sunlight prevents the IR emission to space making it too cool.
Climate scientists have got it completely the wrong way around. Time to go back to the drawing board and put some more real physics in the models.
blouis79,
Physics is not that primitive. Interaction of radiation with matter is known very well and with high certainty. The nature of the GHE is also totally clear. The whole setup is complex enough for allowing many different points of view which may appear different but are really explaining the same effect.
it’s certainly easy to find all kind of misconceptions as so many people without sufficient physics background or without sufficient knowledge about the atmospheric physics present in public their disparate views – and what’s even worse present purposeful misinformation to add to the skeptic movement.
Understanding the basics requires fair and really operative understanding of both thermodynamics and radiative physics, which in turn requires some understanding of quantum mechanics. Nothing magical in any of these but it’s well known that even many who have a degree in physics don’t have real understanding of it.
It’s true that the Earth is warmed from the core but keeping the Earth hot on that heat would require hugely better insulation than any atmosphere can offer. Therefore that heat source has practically no influence on the temperature of the Earth. The error done in leaving it out of consideration is negligible.
Spartacusisfree, you are aggressively stupid in your approach to any kind of convincing scientific explanation. Only a complete poseur would use word salad of the kind that you apply. Since you seem to be so proud of your patents, why don’t you write up something as thorough as a patent application disclosure to explain how you have the truth to understanding climate science? Of course you won’t because you are a poseur, yes indeed. Afraid to put it on the line but completely willing to preach from a fake authority.
WHT: I have noticed your job is to denigrate anyone who does not parrot the IPCC mantra but never to debate the science. This seems to me because you are trained in science but at a technician level so you can’t think for yourself. This is nothing to be ashamed about but to imagine you are intellectually on a par with the really creative individuals in science and engineering who have all seen through he IPCC scam, is, quite frankly, pathetic.
1. The models pluck 40% extra energy out of the air than is put in. This is done by assuming incorrect boundary conditions, expressed in Houghton’s highly-flawed treatise. The net effect is to increase IR warming by ~400%, biasing heat transfer to radiative hence exaggerating dramatically the effect of additional trace CO2. In reality, from fundamental physics, there can be no CO2-AGW. Yes, I’ve said it.
2. They offset it by exaggerating cooling. Heavy lifting assumes optical depth of low level clouds is twice reality. They fine tune by a variable ‘aerosol indirect effect’ supposed to give extra cloud albedo exactly offsetting AGW. The physics, a subset of Carl Sagan’s aerosol physics, is patently wrong,
3. There is a well-organised deception on sites like this in which politically-committed ‘scientists’ deflect criticism of the false science by portraying genuine enquirers as either ill-informed, politically-motivated or intrinsically evil – the ‘denier’ epithet, devised in 1989 by Al Gore as a political ploy.
This conflict is immensely difficult for proponents of truth because the carbon-traders, banks. energy majors and their captive politicians are fighting for big money and can buy anyone they like.
Where does this supposed error manifest itself? How is this seen to occur in the models?
Yes, you have said it. Are you an authority to trust?
Far from it. I have done the visionary thing which is why I can see through poseur fakes such as yourself.
Face it, scientific word salad does not cut it. Start with the fundamentals and lay down all of your equations so that those of us that know what we are doing can rip it to pieces. But of course you won’t because you would hate to get embarrassed. It is so much easier mixing up the word salad from where you sit, flaunting rhetorical phrases that are impossible to disambiguate.
Sparatacusisfree is the epitome of the fake skeptic, lashing out at those of us that can see through her garbage.
What authority to trust, Pekka asks. How about we trust instruments designed to do the job. Here’s what they show so far:
This is your entire 33 years of UAH/RSS satellite temperature data:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/none
Both UAH and RSS are in essential almost perfect agreement.
This is that 33 years of precision global average temperature overlayed on 150 years of north Atlantic ocean surface temperature.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/esrl-amo/every
Note the perfect f*cking fit. Note how it happened that satellite temperature measurement happened to coincide with warming side of 60 year AMDO cycle. Note how when the AMDO went flat in recent years so did the global average temperature.
This appears to be all the proof one should need that before jumping to any hasty conclusions about global warming we need to see if the Atlantic ocscillation cool side repeats and whether the global average temperature tracks it. If it does then anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is falsified.
In my years in big bidness when a large program wound down we’d do what’s called a post mortem to see what things we did right and what we did wrong so as to improve our skill on the next iteration.
The CAGW program post mortem is sure to be fascinating and enlightening but it probably shouldn’t be done the climate science community as that’s about as smart asking the fox to guard the hen-house.
Pekka, I’m glad you partially agree with some real physics.
“It’s true that the Earth is warmed from the core but keeping the Earth hot on that heat would require hugely better insulation than any atmosphere can offer.”
But a surface/atmosphere devoid of radiative abilities that is mass-stable is all we need for a near perfect insulator. Ergo, radiation is a major source of heat loss from earth and without it, the earth would 100% guaranteed be hotter.
Blouis,
With unrealistic enough assumptions almost anything could be true. We live, however, on this Earth, where the geothermal energy is a very small factor in the energy balance of the surface and the atmosphere.
Pekka “With unrealistic enough assumptions almost anything could be true. ”
Clearly not, since the use of bounding assumptions is core to the comprehension of modern science where assumptions and controls permit simplicity of core mechanisms to be understood. That is the basis of science.
Anyone with a beginners physics brain can understand that an isothermal earth with no heat loss would be hotter at the surface. Converting chemical/nuclear energy to heat in the core adds heat, always in a positive direction guaranteed, by climate scientists find that hard to comprehend.
The CO2 global warming fantasy comes from assuming that the predicted temperature on the surface might be assumed from Stefann Boltzmann and Kirchoff. Ooops, due to faulty assumptions, the answer is wrong. Oh, we forgot that the temperature of a planet as seen from space isn’t the surface temperature but the integrated radiating surface including atmosphere. We assumed that it is impossible for any EM radiation to directly penetrate the atmosphere, since the IR gods want all the hand off to occur at the top of atmosphere. We also completely misinterpreted Tyndalls IR “absorbing” gas experiments and failed to understand that failure of transmission probably just means absorption/emission/scattering. 100% CO2 did a barely measurable job of this. 0.04% CO2 effect must be massive to account for the erroneously computed predicted earth surface temperature.
It won’t take too long for the climate science house to come tumbling down. All it will take is for someone with guts and money to study some real physics by experiment, after they’ve sold off all their exposure to carbon stocks.
Why are you contrasting two very different issues.
Who cares what would happen under some assumptions that are so far from reality that nothing like that can even come out. Every scientist would agree that the surface of an hypothetical Earth that’s fully insulated in all respects would be very hot. But every reasonable person does also agree that the Earth is not totally insulated and can never be.
Using such an irrelevant and totally imaginary example as a factor in an argument against GHE doesn’t make any sense. Physics tells both. It tells that the counter-factual Earth would have an extremely hot surface, and it explains why the real Earth is not like that, It tells also why the GHE is true and essential for life on Earth and it tells that an Earth with a much stronger GHE would be too hot for most life.
To have the present forms of life on Earth we need a GHE of approximately present strength. Increasing the GHE a little will not immediately lead to a catastrophe, but knowing how soon increasing the amount of CO2 will make the Earth essentially worse is difficult to know exactly. Many scientists believe that we are close to that point. The issue is are they right and if they are then what “close” means more accurately.
Pekka Pirilä | July 19, 2012 at 2:03 am |
“Every scientist would agree that the surface of an hypothetical Earth that’s fully insulated in all respects would be very hot. But every reasonable person does also agree that the Earth is not totally insulated and can never be. ”
One can’t get a very insulated world unless one have very large atmosphere- something gas giant, like Neptune or Venus [similar to small gas giant]. With Neptune the source of heat is internal.
Earth has a lot geothermal energy which if completely insulated would get very hot.
But if earth is insulated in terms of just trapping energy of sunlight, Earth gets warmer but not very hot.
One way one could had something similar to a well insulated earth would be to have more suns shining on it. Or a million suns shining on it.
A million suns all delivering 1360 watts at TOA, would have have max temperature of somewhere around 120 C.
But increasing insulation effect [rather infinite insulation effect with million suns] but simply have having one rising as another sets [two suns and no nite at equator] would significantly increase Earth’s average temperature, but shouldn’t increase the high temperatures by very much.
Or earth with two sun would be habitable and would have quite a “greenhouse effect”. So two sun gives pretty close approximation to a well insulated earth [though not perfect]. Two suns would get rid of our polar caps, and certainly have a higher average temperature than earth has ever had.
Our sun shines most intensely between 9 am and 3 pm, 6 hours of 24 hr day. Instead 2 you have 4 suns separated by 6 hours. This would increase the average temperature of earth even more. But earth would still probably be habitable. Average temperature of planet may exceed 30 C, perhaps 40 C.
The whole sky would be covered by about 185000 suns. At that point the Earth would be as hot as the suns.
Two suns would raise the effective radiative temperature to 302K or 25C with the present albedo. Four suns would give 86C with the same assumption. Figuring out what the Earth would be like by double or quadruple solar irradiation is not so easy as there would be a lot more moisture in the atmosphere making the GHE stronger but the albedo would also change essentially. Four suns would be far too much for the present type of life on Earth and I’m sure that two suns would be almost as bad.
“The whole sky would be covered by about 185000 suns. At that point the Earth would be as hot as the suns.”
If so than earth would shine like the sun, and heat up the other suns.
Let’s see, Earth is average distance of 149.6 million km
And sphere area with radius of 149.6 million km is 281,237 trillion sq km.
Sun is 1.5 trillion sq km. So yeah around 185,000 suns. So completely enclosed in suns, so nowhere to radiate heat. So yes suppose it would, be same temperature as sun. Though suns being so close to each other is impossible.
“Two suns would raise the effective radiative temperature to 302K or 25C with the present albedo. Four suns would give 86C with the same assumption.”
The four sun would only have 2 share the same sky when they in morning and late afternoon- after 9am the other sun would be setting.
You would roughly get same surface temperature as though the earth didn’t rotate, but always facing the sun. So about same temperature on earth always facing and in a spot in which the sun was at zenith, whatever the temperature was there, would similar to temperature of the four sun earth but averaged over most of surface. So seems to me the average global temperature would about 50 C or less. If assume there is more cloud coverage [and don’t how there couldn’t be] it should much less, and as said maybe 30 C or perhaps warm as 40 C.
Or lets see suppose 4 sun stayed one location. So traveling around the world at equator, the sun is at zenith at each 90 degree longitude.
From zenith point you travel 45 degree west. At this point one sees two suns at 45 degree angle. With clear sky is may or may not warmest spot. Then go north to 45 degree latitude, here one also see two suns but will less heating from suns. Higher up in latitude one get less sunlight and to be warm the heat has be transported from warmer regions.
It seems to me that there will much difference skin temperature of ocean nor much difference in sand temperature in tropics- though of course no night time cooling, it would like the warmest part of day, constantly.
Temperate regions ground temperature will be more like tropical ground temperatures during warmest parts of day. And UK would be tropical but it’s possible it gets less direct sunlight than does now.
“It seems to me that there will much difference skin temperature of ocean nor much difference in sand temperature in tropics- though of course no night time cooling, it would like the warmest part of day, constantly.”
I meant: “It seems to me that there will not be much difference skin temperature of ocean nor much difference in sand temperature….”
Of course not including such things the heating of entire ocean.
There is no way average ocean temperature would around 3 C like we have. And there would not be polar caps [with 2 or 4 suns]. So average temperature of 30 C could also be entire ocean having average temperature near 30 C [again nothing like such warm ocean have not ever been in earth’s history]].
So predicting the weather would be complicated, be it seem the gulf stream warming of Europe would far more noticable. And ocean warming land area in poleward region would be “everywhere”. And generally an insane amount of rain.
Note if earth was instead the mythical black body, the four sun would not increase the black body’s temperature.
“gbaikie | July 19, 2012 at 2:29 pm |
Note if earth was instead the mythical black body, the four sun would not increase the black body’s temperature.”
No that’s wrong. Correct later.
gbaikie,
Better to start learning some physics than continuing to write nonsensical messages. There is not a bit correct in your recent messages, not anything to even start going through any further.
No that’s wrong. Correct later.
If black body then Pekka Pirilä number of 86 C: “Two suns would raise the effective radiative temperature to 302K or 25C with the present albedo. Four suns would give 86C with the same assumption.”
Could be fairly close.
The highest temperature of black body at earth distance is about 120 C and four suns wouldn’t give enough energy to reach this temperature [anything other than black body could reach is equilibrium temperature].
In vacuum [therefore simplifying and give the most sunlight energy to surface] one need more than 4 suns.
Because of spherical shape of planet such earth, only about 1/2 of surface area of sun facing hemisphere gives close to 1360 watts per square meter. Roughly area 5000 km in radius. With earth circumference being around 40,000 km, four sunlit area would fit within the circumference.
So these sunlit area are 5000 squared times pi which about 78.5 million square km.
So intense sunlit: 78.5 million square km.
Earth’s area of hemisphere is 255 million square km
And sphere area is about 511 million square km
So the intense sunlit for 4 suns: 4 times 78.5 is 314 million square km.
Now suppose instead planet which was a black body, you had planet black material on the surface. Say panels km square and inch thick- like huge tiles which covered entire planet. And each of tiles had grout which insulated it from other tiles.
So in vacuum tiled with black body material over entire surface. And 4 suns equally space along the equator. This give four circles which had temperature of about 120 C. Beyond the circles the sunlight in hitting the surface at angle, and further from circle the steeper the angle.
So with this one has 314 million square km [more than 1/2 the planet very hot [120 C] and rest of planet always in sunlight but not as warm as very hot areas. So with black body which does have tiles which are insulated but can conduct heat throughout the sphere would be uniform
somewhere the number which Pekka Pirilä gave of 86 C.
With four suns one 314 million square km with intense sunlight, if add another 200 million square km of intense sun [2 1/2 suns] to light the area not brightly lit with only 4 suns, one then have average temperature of 120 C.
But getting back earth which has atmosphere and this atmosphere adds even more loss of sunlight when sun at angle because sun is traveling through additional atmosphere. And the earth isn’t not resembling a black body. So the intensely lit area would not have 1360 watts per square meter but instead would have near 1000 watts per square meter.
The sunlight from 4 sun should not increase the max present temperature of surface with our one sun. So ocean get about 30 C, and land can get as much around 80 C.
In our world the ocean surface temperature can be near the air temperature, whereas hottest land temperature is usually about 20 C warmer than the air at the surface.
70% of surface area of earth is ocean. With four suns the tropical ocean surface [or surface air temperature should average a most around 30 C. Say cut world in half, one half is tropics including near it adding up to 1/2 planet surface area and other half temperate and arctic. Ocean tropic half 30 C, and temperate and arctic: 20 C.
For land area say 40 C tropics, and 20 C for temperate and arctic half.
So average ocean is 25 C, and average land is 30 C with 70% of area ocean
Four suns would give for a spherical black body exactly the same temperature as one sun gives for a perfectly insulated black surface facing the sun. That’s so because the surface area of a sphere is four times that of a circular disc of the same radius. The temperature of 86C was calculated with the albedo of 0.3.
As long as the atmosphere would be anything similar to that of the Earth, there would be a strong GHE and the surface temperature far higher than 100C meaning that the amount of water vapor would be very high. The atmosphere would be mostly water and the total air pressure at surface much higher than at present. Telling more precisely what the atmosphere would be like would require quite a lot of analysis. As we do not have four suns or even two suns, the interest in doing that analysis is not high. Therefore I don’t think anyone has done it or is willing to spend the required effort for that useless task.
“Four suns would give for a spherical black body exactly the same temperature as one sun gives for a perfectly insulated black surface facing the sun. That’s so because the surface area of a sphere is four times that of a circular disc of the same radius. The temperature of 86C was calculated with the albedo of 0.3.
As long as the atmosphere would be anything similar to that of the Earth, there would be a strong GHE and the surface temperature far higher than 100C meaning that the amount of water vapor would be very high.”
Obviously I don’t agree about surface temperature being so high.
It seems that it is accepted by some that greenhouse effect of Earth adds to it’s average temperature.
Whereas I think if reduce earth atmosphere by 1/2, you would see increase in average temperature.
I also get the impression that people tend to think black body is the hottest a surface can get without adding an atmosphere.
Suppose our Moon had two or four sun.
The I don’t have a reference for the average temperature of the sun lit side of the Moon, nor the night side.
The dayside of moon gets as high as 120 C, and the night side gets as low as -170. These are not average temperatures. Suppose the average temperature of sun lit side of Moon was around 100 C. This mean if Moon two Suns, it would have average global temperature of 100 C.
And if it had four suns, the average temperature would closer to 120 C.
GBA Ikie, I would call people like you aggressively stupid.
Grade: F
The atmosphere of earth reduces the surface temperature. Less atmosphere would allow higher surface temperature.
The highest the surface temperature in a vacuum at earth distance from the sun is around 123 C. The highest surface beneath Earth atmosphere is about 80 C.
Earth’s atmosphere prevents the surface from reaching over 80 C and distributes heating around the entire surface of earth.
Land surface on Earth can reach as high as 80 C, but the ocean surface rarely reach over 30 C.
The ocean area of earth is about 70% and are dominate feature related to global climate.
The average temperature of earth is a measurement of air temperature in the shade. The highest air temperature ever recorded was 57.8 °C:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records
57.8 °C is significantly cooler than the highest temperatures which the ground or other surface can reach. Roofs and asphalt typically exceed 60 C on most areas in the summer.
Air temperature does not exceeds surface temperature and usually 10 to 20 C cooler during the hottest periods of the day.
Any theory that average air temperature could exceed the warmest surface temperature is unlikely. There no examples of this on any planet in the solar system. One should typical expect the ground temperatures to exceed the air temperatures, and any theory severe heating of earth temperature would have include some mechanism that increases surface temperature and very unlikely that ocean surface temperatures can be increased much above 30 C.
Whereas models of future warming which manage reduce the amount the average cooling on earth are within the realm of possible.
So models of warming climate centuries in the future, to be based on any real possibility, must be mostly about warming nites and winters, and cooler regions on Earth.
Warming in terms of climate is mostly about milder condition. Or conditions similar island tropical paradises- rather the blistering heat of some desert during the day.
The problem is few people are scared or tropical paradises, so the warming world has to be sexed up. Depict melting ice as the end of the world, and depicting the world as being in some constant never ending heat wave.
This is gibberish and typical of the stuff that brain-dead skeptics eat up.
One thing worth remembering, the scientists didn’t call for the IPCC. The politicians and policy people, in abdication of their duty to come to grips with and understand the policy implications of the ideas involved, set the thing in motion. The scientists didn’t fix on the notion of providing a ‘single voice of science about climate’, either; that’s what policy people called for before being willing to act. This forcing of scientists to procure a single voice for such a chorus of researchers, studies, views and fields is where the choice of a consensus approach came from; this forcing by the abdication of shiftless and irresponsible politicians shirking their obligations is the issue and the problem.
One way forward must be that the communication of the science involve the education of leaders, of non-scientists, of policy-makers and voters. That education should not be tarnished by the same forces of special interest as now dominate everywhere we look, people manufacturing controversy for a paycheck from some fossil industry backer, or even people who tie their leftwing wagon to science. If there really are any, which I remain.. skeptical about.
Bart R | July 15, 2012 at 4:17 pm | Reply
“One thing worth remembering, the scientists didn’t call for the IPCC. ”
Yes this is a good point, illustrating the IPCC’s central purpose of coming up with a justification for additional political action and (carbon) taxation. This clearly flavors the choice of which scientists are used (and not used, eg McIntyre).
Vassily | July 16, 2012 at 2:32 am |
And yet, the IPCC has resulted in startlingly little action. Stunningly little response from the most advanced nations in the world can be attributed positively to the work of the IPCC. China? The USA? There are 190 signatories to Durban; there are 24 carbon taxes worldwide.
The data say you’re not merely wrong, but ludicrously backwards.
As for which scientists are used and not used.. What the heck? McIntyre, for example, has never claimed to be a scientist. He’s a retired accountant from the mining industry with degrees in Philosophy and Politics, or something of the sort. Which scientists aren’t ‘used’? Doesn’t the list of IPCC reviewers include numerous voices of dissent in these issues? In point of fact, aren’t there more scientists outside the consensus working on IPCC reports in some capacity than make up the entirety of the NIPCC?
So that’s a second point you present entirely opposite of the truth. But not to worry; the NIPCC is pretty opposite of the truth on most issues too, so you’re in familiar company there.
Oxford. math genius who switched fields.
many of us start in math and switch.
Steven Mosher | July 17, 2012 at 4:39 am |
Math genius?
Oh? Can you name the new proofs in Mathematics attributed to Mr. McIntyre? I’m unfamiliar with them.
And I try to keep up with such things.
I’d suggest that McIntyre’s Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics places him in a stronger position than Mann (Applied Mathematics and Physics) or Jones (Environmental Science (passed), Excel (failed) )
You can suggest anything you want, but your suggestion doesn’t make a retired mining consultant a scientist. McIntyre soi-même doesn’t even refer to himself as a scientist. That’s a hell of a field promotion.
@pda
Which bit of paleoclimatological analysis requires some special ‘scientific’ skill beyond that of being a statistician? And how does that skill need to manifest itself?
Example…I am a chemist by training. I am supposed to be good at designing experiments, conducting them with reasonable practical skill, qualitative and quantitative analysis, good observational skills, able to use a variety of lab equipment and sensibly interpret the output etc etc..
So what are the special skills needed for paleoclimatological analysis? And which of those would a professional statistician be unlikely to possess?
I don’t know. I’m not a paleoclimatologist. Why are you asking me?
@pda
‘Why am I asking you?’
Because you are the one making the case that there are such qualities that mean you can only do paleoclimatological analysis is you are ‘a scientist’, not a statistician.
Or have I misunderstood your point?
No. McIntyre also doesn’t claim that he, McIntyre, is a scientist.
If you want to convince him that he is, you’ll have to take it up with him.
PDA–In your world what is a scientist? What is the difference between between and engineer and a scientist? Math specialists are often considered scientists
Again, I point to Howard Cosell whose memoirs are in his book: “I never played the game”. You don’t have to be an ex-jock to interview, announce and analyze sports. Howard did it better than the jocks. Similarly, it is not your paper qualifications that count. It is the content of your work. I have found the work of Steve McIntyre to be excellent regardless of whether he fits some people’s requirements for education.
Good question. Ask McIntyre.
@pda
This is an entirely pointless conversation. We have established, it seems that neither of us, nor he himself, calls McSteve a scientist.
But a degree in Mathematics and a career using applied statistics makes him a splendid guy to spot the holes in the DIY statistics produced by Mann and his paleoclimatological chums.
I agree with you that this is a pointless conversation. Your critique is probably best directed at the person who started the conversation, though.
Right, so the fact the governments haven”t adopted the IPCC’s recommendations, means the IPCC has been making them.
Idiotic, Bart, even by your standards.
And I suppose McIntyre is hopeless on paleo and stats, right?
Correction:
so the fact the governments haven”t adopted the IPCC’s recommendations, means the IPCC *hasn’t* been making them
Vassily | July 16, 2012 at 6:21 pm |
Perhaps you’re overthinking this. Let’s go back to where the facts are, and see where you went wrong in the first place.
McIntyre isn’t a working scientist, a man with credentials in sciences, or a man who calls himself a scientist. You said he was a scientist, and that it offended you somehow that he was being overlooked, instead of being ‘used’ by the IPCC.
Yet he is being ‘used’, despite all this. His audits have been studied and commented on, including the full almost ONE PERCENT amplitude change in the full almost ONE PERCENT time range his findings altered in ONE SINGLE GRAPH.
That’s it. That’s all, for all McIntyre’s sound and fury and years and years of laboring away, that McIntyre’s contribution to science amounts to. A footnote among thousands of footnotes, and a blip on a line among thousands of lines on a graph among hundreds of graphs.
In a series of reports that governments have made effective response to at a rate of something like three to thirteen percent by number, and less than one percent by population.
Hardly worth even mentioning.
No Bart, the problem is you are underthinking this.
McIntyre is adept at stats, which is how he uncovered Mann’s faked Hockey Stick. But because the IPCC is pre-committed committed to alarmism, he was soon excluded.
Strange then that the IPCC poster child hokey stick graph from AR3 has hardly ever ever been referred to since McIntyre demolished its credibility. Quite a big ‘footnote’ methinks.
For somebody with no influence or credibility he seems to have a disproportionate effect.
Yes, and not only has the IPCC taken the Hockey Stick off its pedestal, they sneakily did it quietly.
Vassily | July 17, 2012 at 11:12 am |
Oddly, I’ve been accused of underthinking rarely enough compared to the opposite that I’m.. comfortable.. that you’re in error.
Mr. McIntyre’s puissant statistical acumen aside, claiming there is no hockey stick due the audits is plain false; this isn’t my claim, but the claim of von Storch. “This was on purpose, as we do not think that McIntyre has substantially contributed in the published peer-reviewed literature to the debate about the statistical merits of the MBH and related method. They have published one peer-reviewed article on a statistical aspect, and we have published a response – acknowledging that they would have a valid point in principle, but the critique would not matter in the case of the hockey-stick … we see in principle two scientific inputs of McIntyre into the general debate – one valid point, which is however probably not relevant in this context, and another which has not been properly documented.”
The claim the IPCC has abandoned the hockey stick, likewise, belies the history of the controversy and the current state of affairs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
Wegman’s report, the most strident and strongest candidate against the IPCC hockey stick (as all von Storch achieved was injecting a reasonable level of caution into interpretation and analyses, not an effective rebuttal), has been rather thoroughly discredited, to the point no one will associate themselves with its odor by citing it in serious work. There were problems with the IPCC analyses. There have been further developments since the first use of the hockey stick by the IPCC. These later developments run about 6:1 in strengthening the claims, along the lines of increasing our understanding of the limits of how much information we can gain from single paleo reconstructions alone without consiliency, and just how unusual the cumulative global phenomena associated with the elevated CO2 level due human activities are from a historical perspective.
Mann hasn’t abandoned the hockey stick. It features prominently in his recent book. The IPCC haven’t abandoned the hockey stick; they’re still devoting chapters to establishing paleo data (especially chapter 5) and data about the unusual aspects of the modern climate. (www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press-releases/ipcc-wg1-ar5-authors.pdf)
You’re simply blowing smoke.
Bart R shows he has no idea what he’s talking about:
But hey, when criticizing those who disagree with the consensus, reality has no importance. All that matters is to say the person sucks!
Brandon, Bart didn’t say McIntyre “sucks”, you did.
McIntyre might be the gemius, but imo his association with McKitrick pulls him down a few notches.
BS, WHT
To set the record straight, I have a decent amount of respect for Mr. McIntyre’s intellectual gifts, and Dr. McKitrick’s talents as a lobbyist.
I just think the amount of self-promotion, grandstanding, and attacks on others without like substantive contributions on either of their parts is net negative and out of proportion with any positive contribution each has made.
So, no, I don’t think they ‘suck’.
I think they suck the life out of what should be a more elevated and productive scientific pursuit. A different thing entirely.
WebHubTelescope, you just responded to an intentional exaggeration by saying, “But he didn’t actually say that!” No duh. That’s kind of a given when one is using hyperbole.
But thanks, I guess, for clarifying the fact Bart R didn’t say what he obviously didn’t say. I suppose some people may need to be told I am capable of reading simple sentences.
Bart R, given the fact you’ve demonstrated you have basically no idea what Steve McIntyre has contributed, I don’t think many people will be impressed by your opinion:
It’s easy to hold an opinion like this when you don’t bother to learn much of anything about what someone has done.
It is you who is blowing smoke Bart. There is no doubt whatever than Mann’s Hockey Stick is now very much relegated, and that this is due in large part to McIntyre’s exposure of its bogus DIY statistical methods.
How about that ridiculous T-REX? What a buffoonish argument that was and how easy it was for real scientists, not to mention statisticians, to debunk.
The grandstanding aspect is certainly the key. Without that, very little influential scientific achievement has been shown. I work it the other way, start from some insanely great insight and rally behind that.
Try not to overthink THIS, Bart.
This is your entire 33 years of UAH/RSS satellite temperature data:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/none
Both UAH and RSS are in essential almost perfect agreement.
This is that 33 years of precision global average temperature overlayed on 150 years of north Atlantic ocean surface temperature.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/esrl-amo/every
Note the perfect f*cking fit. Note how it happened that satellite temperature measurement happened to coincide with warming side of 60 year AMDO cycle. Note how when the AMDO went flat in recent years so did the global average temperature.
This appears to be all the proof one should need that before jumping to any hasty conclusions about global warming we need to see if the Atlantic ocscillation cool side repeats and whether the global average temperature tracks it. If it does then anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is falsified.
In my years in big bidness when a large program wound down we’d do what’s called a post mortem to see what things we did right and what we did wrong so as to improve our skill on the next iteration.
The CAGW program post mortem is sure to be fascinating and enlightening but it probably shouldn’t be done the climate science community as that’s about as smart asking the fox to guard the hen-house.
@Webbie
“Without that, very little influential scientific achievement has been shown.”
“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact” – Charles Darwin
Love the supercilious use of the passive, by the way.
You want active voice then you look at real scientific acievement, of the kind that I write about. Check the book out and you won’t find a passive voice. OTOH, this site kind of deserves it.
Dave Springer | July 18, 2012 at 5:34 am |
Here, let me help you out with the part of the picture you ‘accidentally’ left off:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/esrl-amo/every/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:12
I’m sure the omission of data that conflicts with your preconceived conclusion was purely unintentional. Really.
And it didn’t take much thinking at all to see through the sham.
But let’s simplify this even more, so you can see it a bit clearer:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/every/mean:179/mean:181/plot/gistemp/mean:179/mean:181
So. You were saying?
Or this and this.
Dr Curry,
You ask for comments:
(i) your paper is quite long, but I trust your judgement as to knowing the expectations in this regard;
(ii) The way forward –> make the data etc supporting reports readily accessible.
As background to my second comment: I believe the general reluctance to archive the data etc supporting ‘peer-reviewed’ reports is one of the consequences of the consensus approach. This lack of archiving is not merely the fault of climate scientists – it is aided & abetted by the bureaucrats providing the funding and the journals containing the peer-reviewed reports. It is almost as though too many people are scared that if the underlying details are released there is the potential for someone to dispute the accuracy of their findings and thereby raise doubt about the consensus.
For what it is worth, my own opinion is that in generally refusing ready access to the data etc supporting reports the CAGW proponents are acting in a counter-productive manner if their objective is political action – I think the current approach increases the scepticism of a substantial group of the public without whose support the political decisions for change become less likely. It is quite conceivable that in the short term certain reports are found to contain unwarranted conclusions. However, once lessons have been learnt more bullet-proof findings will emerge (which may or may not support the calls for political action to control human activity).
It is no business of scientists to solve practical problems. Not even to aid decision makers.
Politicians seeking advice on practical issues should hire engineers. If there are no engineers in a particular field, the science is not ready yet. It is as simple as that.
“It is no business of scientists to solve practical problems. Not even to aid decision makers.
Politicians seeking advice on practical issues should hire engineers. If there are no engineers in a particular field, the science is not ready yet. It is as simple as that.”
Need a market related to this. Government could do things which help develop a market. Business would be terraforming.
Surely there is some need for anyone in control of region [countries leaders, or controling bodies of international regions [ocean] to want to change a region.
Good point.
I don’t know if anyone has beaten me to it, but if not, I’d like to claim as Martin’s law :
Anyone who signs off their argument as “It is as simple as that”, or with similar wording, is invariably wrong.
Similar wording like
‘The Science is Settled’ ?
Fifty years ago I formulated Cunningham’s Law: “Rubbish expands to fill the volume available for its disposal.”
Hmm, I see that this thread is getting quite roomy …
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/309442/football-and-hockey-mark-steyn
“If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s ‘the Jerry Sandusky of climate change’, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his ‘investigation’ by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.”
Though my heart breaks for the kinder in sylvania, it does so too for the children and grandchildren of the world whom the Piltdown Mann has damaged. Weigh the two.
=================
Chuck Wilson
The scientific literature is alive and well with lively arguments about the science of anthropogenic global warming. What is the climate sensitivity? Will we ever have an accurate estimate in the face of uncertainties concerning direct and indirect effects of aerosol? Will feedbacks over the relevant time frame be understood? Will heat transfer to and from oceans and ocean currents be sufficiently well understood to permit prediction of ENSO and AMO events? etc etc etc So Dr. Curry’s wish for a honest, open discussion is met in an ongoing way in the peer-reviewed literature.
Dr. Curry fails to honestly evaluate either Dr, Singer’s NIPCC effort or the prank petition started by the late Dr. Seitz. (Dr. Oreskes is right about the nature of these contributions.) And she fails to mention the competent, independent polls of members of AGU and AMS which show overwhelming majorities in favor of the propositions that climate is warming, human caused emissions are behind much of the warming and that the impacts of the warming will be serious. So much of her verbal gymnastics miss the relevant facts of our situation.
Those facts suggest that we must create effective mitigation policies in the face of considerable uncertainties (see above). But those uncertainties do not include many of the denialist memes repeated gleefully here. The sign and importance of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect are not controversial at the 2-sigma expert level. There is in fact an expert consensus. Read http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-decadal-variations.pdf.
So lets start the discussion of policy. I say we need to put a price on carbon emissions in spite of considerable uncertainties concerning climate sensitivities.
Yer wrong. Satellite data for past 32 years shows a whopping total of 0.36C warming. That’s 0.11C per decade. The IPCC AR1 report predicted 0.30C/decade warming. They didn’t just miss the mark they missed it by 200%. This is a complete and utter failure to demonstrate any predictive skill at all.
If you don’t like it you can lump it. The satellites haven’t lied and in fact are the only reliable measure of global temperature trend to the kind of precision needed to test the warming hypothesis. It failed. Get over it.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/plot/rss/every/trend/plot/uah/every/plot/uah/every/trend
Read it and rejoice. Global warming isn’t a problem after all. This should be good news for people who don’t have a hidden agenda. Sort of like a doctor telling you that the biopsy of that lump on your left nut wasn’t testicular cancer after all…
Why do I get the feeling that the news of catastrophic global warming was wrong won’t be well received by those who were most frightened and concerned by it? What’s up with that, Charlie?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23
Higher resolution graph with offsets to lay RSS on top of UAH data and move the beginning of the trend in 1979 to the zero mark to make it easier to read the end of the trend in 2012 on the right hand scale marks.
I miscounted the tick marks on the previous graph. The total warming in 33 years is 0.46C not 0.36C. This brings the measured trend up to 0.14C per decade which is still less than half the IPCC prediction for the business as usual CO2 emission scenario and slightly less the best case scenario of reducing CO2 emissions to 50% of 1990 level.
According to the IPCC we actually cut CO2 emission to half of what it was in 1990. Either that or they were wrong by a factor of 2 how much warming we should expect. Something is very very wrong with the ensemble computer models which got the rate of warming so badly mistaken.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23
Spread the word. The jury is in. The satellites had spoken after 33 years of temperature tracking. Global warming is minimal.
Game over. Thanks for playing.
Note there is no consensus needed for the satellite data. Unlike computer models which are hypotheses stated in computer programming language the satellite is empirical i.e. fact not conjecture. The fact of the matter is that measured warming over the past third century shows 0.14C/decade warming. That’s it. These are the facts. The CAGW hypothesis is wrong, wrong, wrong.
1. Satellite data is is not “empirical”
2. Don’t mistake trends at the surface for trends aloft
3. When you take the mean of models that range in sensitivity between
2.2 and 4.4, with an average of 3.2, there is a good probability you will miss on the high side. That is, sensitivity is likely less than 3.
4. calculate your errors for both “obervations” and the models.
5. you need to look at total BAU forcings, NOT just C02.
You know of course that the satellites use radiative transfer equations (GCM code) to calculate the temperature. You knew that dave, right?
Steven Mosher, You write “You know of course that the satellites use radiative transfer equations (GCM code) to calculate the temperature. You knew that dave, right.”
There is an enormous difference between VALIDATED and NON-VALIDATED models. Radiative transfer models are in the category of validated models; like those which calculate the wind loading of new structures. The models the IPCC uses are non-validated.
Just for the record. I never claimed radiative transfer models were non-validated. I claimed they had never been shown to be a valid way of estimating radiative forcing.
Jim
“There is an enormous difference between VALIDATED and NON-VALIDATED models. Radiative transfer models are in the category of validated models; like those which calculate the wind loading of new structures. The models the IPCC uses are non-validated.”
Dont you know that the Radiative transfer models used in GCMs
ARE VALIDATED. First you cant find the validated models that show doubling C02 will give us 3.7Watts and then you dont even know the models that go into making up a GCM. Good christ, spend more time reading and less time posting the same mistakes.
Question: what models does a GCM use for calculating radiative transfer and how were they tested?
here Jim. More reading for you. Funny how you try to compare
“validated models” like raditaive transfer code and models used by climate science. doh! Guess what, Its the validated models that say “doubling C02 gives us 3.7Watts”. get it?
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/rnh0501.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1991/90JD01618.shtml
http://circ.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Are the water vapor feedback mechanisms in the models validated yet?
Dave. I think you are playing a little fast and lose with the facts
AR1 was published in 1990.
Using the models at the time, the predicted the following for Busineses as Usual:
“global mean temperature during the next century of
about 0 .3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of
0 2°C to 0 5°C per decade), this is greater than that
seen over the past 10,000 years This will result in a
likely increase in global mean temperature of about
1°C above the present value by 2025 and 3C before
the end of the next century The rise will not be
steady because of the influence of other factors”
1. The first line they draw in the sand is at 2025. looking at their
error bars its about .7C to 1.6C.
2. The predict that the rise will not be steady.
3. The assumed forcing for C02 was 6.3ln(C02) in the mid 90s this was reduced to 5.35ln(C02) hmm I think the paper was in 1998.
4. BAU assumed about a 1.5 watt increase from 1990-2015.
so you need to compare actual forcing to projected forcing.
Bottom line, we did not see an increase in Forcing of 1.5W.
in other words, there ability to predict emissions is not very good.
Here’s what it actually stands at versus pre industrial
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html
I’ve linked to this graph here many times. Around 1990, the growth rates of 5 categories flattened significantly. Methane levels have resumed growth.
They missed this prediction because?
Well, since scenario B takes into account full participation in the Montreal Protocol, along with some other GHG reducing measures, I suppose my guess is that they had a poor handle on atmospheric chemistry?
Steven, that seems doubtful, but I know you do your research. Do you have a link?
JCH, the annex has emissions scenario descriptions
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_spm.pdf
Without studying it I could not say. In General, the elephant in the room is EMISSIONS predictions. The best GCM in the world will fail to predict the future climate, if you feed it the wrong emissions. Predicting emissions is not science. its not climate science. It’s demographics ( predicting population) and economics and politics.
“The best GCM in the world will fail to predict the future climate, if you feed it the wrong emissions.” Fine, but now that we know the ‘right’ emissions it should be a simple matter to run the ‘failed’ simulation again and see if it ‘succeeds’ this time. Surely this is being done all the time, making this sort of thread redundant?
yes, i’ve often suggested this. however they dont keep frozen copies of models around. Constant improvement.
The reason old models tend not to be kept in working order is because once they fall out of use they are expensive to port to new platforms (you need to port them, to scientifically revalidate them and do new control runs etc.). Some of the AR3 models live on because small model are good for use in academia, good enough for down-scaling global data to regional projections (ie. by small countries with small compute resources), and good when you want to run large ensembles, eg in quantifying uncertainty work (including climateprediction.net).
You don’t really need to run some of these older models though. If you know its sensitivity I believe you can reasonably accurately guess the difference in temperature rise you’d get for a difference in forcing.
@steve milesworthy
I think your comments merely show that climatologists aren’t treating this problem with the seriousness they would like to have us believe it deserves.
With supposedly ‘definitive’ pronouncements like the IPCC reports, climatology should long ago have moved away from the position of being a pure R&D project with research level quality control (i.e not very much) and research level verification (i.e. not very much) and research level everything else to a more controlled and organised programme, where all the tools and techniques we’ve developed to work on really difficult and/or dangerous problems can be deployed.
Part of my complete dismay at the state of climatology was to discover the disconnect between important pronouncements like ‘The Science is Settled’ and the reality of it all being based on a few semi-competent semi-scientists publishing papers whose only qulaity control was a nod and a wink from their mates.
Then I studied Harry_Read_Me, and my impression that this was all little better than junk science was reinforced in spades.
If you guys want us to take your pronouncements seriously you have t move away from the simple pointy head bearded modeller toiling away with great ideas. And that means doing all the boring bits as well. Like independent audits, and openness and presenting your data for publication and porting old models to new platforms and replication and a long list of other stuff that we use elsewhere to helo to get the best results we can.
It should no longer be acceptable that these aren’t done because the individual researcher finds it inconvenient or tedious or it might benefit somebody else or any of the other playground excuses that we hear.
“yes, i’ve often suggested this. however they dont keep frozen copies of models around. Constant improvement.”
Not sure where your tongue is, but if it’s not in your cheek – What a load of bollocks! Are you seriously telling us that what I suggest is no longer possible, because the model on which the unskilful prediction was made is no longer available for use? And that you don’t find this sufficient grounds for dismissing it out of hand?
Latimer,
Then I studied Harry_Read_Me, and my impression that this was all little better than junk science was reinforced in spades.
As we established on another thread, once you studied harry_read_me, you stopped studying! You wrongly thought that this code, or the CRU temperature data was used somehow to influence model development.
tomfop
And that you don’t find this sufficient grounds for dismissing it out of hand?
So you at dinner with a bunch of friends. Someone pays and works out on a napkin that you owe him twelve quid. You check the napkin and say “I’ll pay you later”. Later you ask to see the napkin and he says he threw it away. I expect he’ll be pleased to hear that you now dismiss out of hand his claim for twelve quid.
More seriously, I expect the code for most of the models exists, and can be run – as I said, the one I am familiar with is. But for some of them, you might have to update some of the compiler choices to get it to run. If you are a scientist (or a politician) you want to spend your time looking at models and/or data that have been *traceably* scientifically improved from the previous version (the traceability is what is important). If it is a scientifically interesting question to repeat the AR3 runs on early 21st Century observed emissions, though, you might find it’s already been done.
@steve milesworthy
‘As we established on another thread, once you studied harry_read_me, you stopped studying! You wrongly thought that this code, or the CRU temperature data was used somehow to influence model development.’
I don’t at all remember that interpretation of history.
I do however remember suggesting that HRM illustrated that the CRU guys were entirely unfit to be in charge of any data more complex than counting their coffee money (and that only under close adult supervision). And that any data produced by such a shambolic IT outfit should be treated with a great deal of caution. As it seems to be the bedrock of much climatological research, it is all dodgy stuff indeed. And if – as you may claim – it is not that bedrock, then WTF is it for?
I’ll take the liberty to point out that it is very likely that I have conducted a great many more IT audits – and worked in a great many more IT installations – than you have. And so I am able to bring a wide real-world perspective to their practices. Whereas I guess that you have only an experience limited to climate research.
It may be – and I am horrified to think that it is – that the sloppiness and lack of professionalism shown by CRU (lost paperwork, lost data, unknown datasets lying around, unfinished projects, undocumented programs, undescribed data etc etc etc) are typical of climatology, and that this is why you see nothing at all unusual or reprehensible in any of it.
But if I am employing people to work on ‘the most important problem humanity has ever faced’, I think Ip;d rather have them with abit more IT knowledge than can be gained by reading a Teach Yourself Fortran book and who have a better idea of data curation than chucking it all (unlabelled) in a pile on the floor and hoping that the Weather Fairy will guide you to it when needed (or not in the case of FoI requests).
Running IT professionally (as compared with possessing a laptop and being able to download stuff) is a serious business. There are tools and techniques that we have learnt over sixty years. That no climatologist seems even to pay lipservice to this very basic stuff is deeply shocking. Harry just brought it to the surface.
And just like you;d probably prefer to fly in aeroplane maintained by a team of professional aircraft engineers, I’d prefer to have the IT part of climatology – which is a huge part of it – done by by somebody other than amateurs.
Latimer,
You don’t remember the discussion, but you do repeat your erroneous understanding:
As it seems to be the bedrock of much climatological research, it is all dodgy stuff indeed. And if – as you may claim – it is not that bedrock, then WTF is it for?
Here’s the discussion:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/06/19/analyzing-people-who-talk-about-agw-denialism/#comment-211324
where you erroneously said:
But the basic datasets like HADCRUTn *are* very operationally important, They are used in so many different ways that they *have* to be right. I imagine that they are used in your modelling efforts.
@steve milesworthy
So WTF is the ‘work’ of the CRU used for? It is clearly used by your own employers to some effect, since they collaborate together to produce HADCRUT3.
Here is the reference:
‘The dataset is a collaborative product of the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia’
from:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/
Since you guys are prepared to collaborate with the CRU guys it seems likely that you are also satisfied with the IT ‘standards’ they set and which are so well documented to be lamentable by Hapless Harry. Much as I suspected.
Lamentable IT standards, useless models, failed forecasts, pathetic quality control…. is there anything at all worth paying for in climatology?
As I understand it, HadCRUT3 was a replacement for CRU2.1, and CRU2.1 was what Harry was trying to untangle. So perhaps the addition of “Had” came with the requirement that poor Harry be dragged in to help straighten things out, and a drive to improve professionalism.
Given that the results have been validated by Muller et al, it would seem that *something* was done right.
Jamescharleswilson
@ July 15, 2012 at 8:22 pm
You say:
Yes, let’s start the discussion on policy. You say you want to put a price on carbon.
I would like to see your quantitative analysis that supports that policy. I believe it is a wrong policy for many reasons. Here is just some:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
$431 billion.
Australians could go to Moon and then to Mars for the price.
And that wouldn’t tossing money down the drain.
Jamescharleswilson
@ July 15, 2012 at 8:22 pm
You say:
How serious? I mean in $.
How much should we be prepared to spend on mitigation?
What is the probability that the proposed mitigation, such as a carbon price, will avoid the damages you expect?
What will be the ultimate compliance cost of the carbon price when implemented to the standard that will eventually be required?
What will be the consequences of the carbon price, especially in the poorest countries?
I am not interested in more scary adjectives. I want to see proper quantification. I want to see a proper decision tree analysis. I want to see the basis of estimates. I want to be able to follow this analysis, and all the source information from the bottom to the top.
The desperation of the AGW consensus holders is palpable.
fan, 15 july 10 34, fan re yr energetic publication industry dismissing yer ‘denialism,’
i keep tellin’ ya, fan, size doesn’t matter. Yer arguin’ from a logical fallacy, fan, an offspin of argumentum ad populum, the old ‘consensus of headcount’ trick. I think yer fallacy is known as the argumentum ad maximus, fan.
Look i could git through a thousand articles in a morning, I read fast, but the content, fan, at present I’m reading Jessica Anderson’s ‘Tirra lirra by the River,’ you and i both share a love of reading fiction, I believe, fan.
Oh well, might as well…:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) hey, kinda addictive.
Peter lang, 15 july 10.12 pm:
Uh uhh, down the memory hole. Things go missing,
‘ argumentum ad absentis,’ I think they call it.
or “argumentum ex ignoramus?”
for “the dog ate my homework” we have
‘argumentum in canem’
or
‘argumentum esum per canem’
Walking by the river, watching the mysterious interactions on its silvered surface, riffles from underwater snags and from the wind’s breath, sometimes you experience an ‘aha’ moment.
I had one today … “The IPCC is no longer relevant!”
Then I realized … it never really was.
Observe nature, fergit mann’s nature tricks.
Every time I go to the bottom of this thread in the hope of finding some new interesting or useful comment I find this random inanity. Can it be removed to some less prominent place?
I’m working to clean up the thread
My best editor is fear of creating work for Miz Curry. You should see what I really think.
=============
Now that’s a sobering thought miss Kim.
Makes sewing easier. :-)
Thanks Judith. Perhaps you would also be so kind as to remove the immediately preceding comment of mine which is now even more irritating than tempterrain’s post to which it referred (which post seems now thankfully to have disappeared).
Mr. simon abingdon, Perhaps you should stick with tradition & just type faster.
Did I post this yet?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23
33 years of satellite temperture data. Global coverage. High precision. No significant disagreement in trend between RSS and UAH, the two competing organizations that crunch the sensor data into global averaged data. THE definitive test of “consensus” climate science prediction.
Predicted: 0.30C/decade warming
Actual: 0.14C/decade warming
The jury is in.
FAIL
I cannot stress this enough. The effing consensus hypothesis made a prediction 1990 and 22 years we must acknowledge, if we are sane and honest, that it failed.
I must concede it’s a much easier acknowledgement for me because, as it turns out, quite predictably going by past performance, I was correct.
Even worse, for UAH at least all of the warming comes in a single jump, coincident with the big ENSO. No GHG warming here. That is an impact of zero degrees per decade.
Dave
Do you have the link for IPCC’s 0.3 deg C per decade warming projection?
It’s in AR1. DAFS.
go to the site. start with the foreward READ THE EFFIN LITERATURE.
and please be aware that to TEST this prediction you have to
FIRST determine that the emissions that actually occured MATCH the emissions they projected.
Example: If you jump off the golden gate bridge, you will hit the water at 100mph.
Thats a conditional prediction. If you jump off the house and say that you hit at 20mph, you cant use that test to evaluate the golden gate bridge prediction.
So, IFF emissions from 1985 to 2025 match BAU, then they predicted
about 1C of warming ( -.3C/+.6C) IFF!
Thanks Steven
So, ‘projections’ in climate science are …. ? Wild guesses ? Failed predictions ?
@tomcat
‘So, ‘projections’ in climate science are …. ? Wild guesses ? Failed predictions ?’
There is a definite lifecycle with such things.
Initially all of the outcomes are ‘predictions’. This allows the most scary ones to be incorporated into other people’s papers. As in ‘climate models predict that up to 30 feet of water will overwhelm city X in the next 20 years’, and hope that they are taken seriously.
As time proceeds however, and Mother Nature shows no sign of doing anything like the scary outcome, they are downgraded to ‘projections’, allowing weaselly-worded defences ‘a la Mosher’ that the underlying assumptions have not been met and so the bet is null and void. And that ‘projections’ were just looking at a variety of possibilities. Note that the papers which cited the original scary stories are not modified at this point.
But the sensible researcher with an eye to his career and legacy will have ensured that there is such a wide range of possible outcomes that – as in any good game of Texas sharpshooting – one of them is going to be nearer to the truth than all the others. Once this has been identified, it alone gets upgraded to the status of a ‘forecast’, and potentially can be spun as a definite triumph for the modeller.
We can see this most clearly with Hansen’s model from 1988 where some alarmist commentators try to use the least extreme of his scenarios as ‘proof’ that his alarmist predictions have been right all along. Ignoring the inconvenient truths that even this vastly overestimates the observed warming and assumes that we have already taken a series of mitigation actions that have not occurred. The best that can actually be said is that this ‘forecast’ is less egregiously wrong than any of his others. But it is still way way wrong.
By careful use of wording and change in usage at the correct time, climate modellers can fool the casual observer into believing that their models are better than completely useless forecasting tools. But a closer examination shows that – like so much in ‘climate science’ – this is all an illusion.
The FAR forcing graph is not really much different from the graph in Hansen’s infamous 1988 paper. So it is no surprise that this defense of the FAR “projections” is identical to the arguments made to try to resurrect Hansen 10988.
First, the CO2 emissions figures in the FAR and Hansen 1988 were not “projections” – an estimate or forecast of a future situation or trend based on a study of present ones. They were scenarios – a postulated sequence or development of events. Their “predictions” were about what the climate response would be in each of those scenarios. You would think that the resident logic school marm would know the difference.
What Hansen and the IPCC were saying was that IF emissions were at x level, THEN forcing would rise to y level. They then argued that temperatures would follow. That’s the GW in CAGW.
“The numbers given below are based on high resolution models, scaled to be consistent with our best estimate of global mean warming of 1.8°C by 2030.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_spm.pdf
Now I don’t happen to believe we “know” the global average temperature in 1990 to tenths of a degree accuracy. Any more than I think we can calculate a GAT today with that precision. But if you take the CAGW arguments in support of Hansen and the IPCC on their own data terms, then both were flat wrong.
Their PREDICTION was that, IF emissions continued in a business as usual trend, THEN temperatures would rise accordingly. Leaving my skepticism re GAT aside, using their own figures for the GAT in 1990 and today, their predictions were flat wrong.
I don’t need to read the literature to know what the IPCC and Hansen said, I can read what they themselves wrote. And they were wrong. Badly.
“Their PREDICTION was that, IF emissions continued in a business as usual trend, THEN temperatures would rise accordingly.”
Emissions didn’t continue in a business as usual trend.
CFC and Methane levels slowed down.
@lolwot
‘“Their PREDICTION was that, IF emissions continued in a business as usual trend, THEN temperatures would rise accordingly.”
Emissions didn’t continue in a business as usual trend.
CFC and Methane levels slowed down.’
So as forecasters they are doubly useless. They couldn’t forecast the emissions levels correctly, nor the temperaure change arising.
This is like not only failing to predict the winner of the 3:00, but not being able to identify which of the many racecourses is involved.
Can anyone give me any real-world reason why we should keep on paying these incompetents? They have had 30 years of good living at our expense and have produced precisely nothing of any predictive value..
They were supposed to predict countries full of nobheads like LA were going to agree on doing something?
‘They were supposed to predict countries full of nobheads like LA were going to agree on doing something?’
Nope. Whether you think I am a ‘nobhead’ or not is irrelevant. Though you might want to consider that calling somebody by various abusive terms is an unlikely way of persuading them to support a course of action you would like them to take. Nor is making alarmist predictions that are patently wrong.
But the climate modellers have really only one purpose in life (once we have got over their individual pursuits of money, career and status), and that is to make useful predictions about future climate. All the rest of their activities are just supporting stuff to this overriding goal (*)
And in this they have spectacularly.failed. Nobody has ever been able to come up with a single climate prediction that has turned out to be anywhere near right when it is subsequently compared with what actually happened. You can get just as good results in about a zillionth of the time and with a zillionth of the cost using Arrhenius’s 1907 paper, a ruler and logarithmic graph paper. The billions spent on climate modelling have produced no useful results.
(*) If you believe that there are some other goals for climate modelling. please lay them out and we can debate them. I suspect that most of them will come back to ‘money, status or career’ as mentioned above. And with my pension plan largely invested in IT. I’m delighted when you buy new supercomputers. But that’s a spin off, not a goal.
“So as forecasters they are doubly useless. They couldn’t forecast the emissions levels correctly, nor the temperaure change arising.”
The fact the world did indeed warm seems to have slipped your mind.
So as forecasters they are doubly useless. They couldn’t forecast the emissions levels correctly, nor the temperaure change arising.
Latimer, I think you need to loosen the elastic on your sock puppet, you are getting beyond parody. Perhaps Stirling English needs to come out for a bit.
When you have finished reading up on how models are validated against climatology, you can read up on how scenarios were generated for the CMIP3 model runs. This might give you some insight on the problem of making predictions (as opposed to projections).
Not trying to persuade you. Do not want to persuade you. Want you where you belong on the wrong side of history.
@steve milesworthy
‘When you have finished reading up on how models are validated against climatology, you can read up on how scenarios were generated for the CMIP3 model runs. This might give you some insight on the problem of making predictions (as opposed to projections)’
Sorry matey. Not my job.
We collectively employ people like you to be the ‘professionals’ to work on these problems. Remember that nice thing you get each month called ‘your pay cheque’? It doesn’t arrive because we like the colour of your eyes, or we want to advance your career. We pay you to solve those problems. Just like we pay doctors to treat patients or teachers to teach our children.
It is not an answer to the observation that you have failed to come up with any useful climate forecasts/predictions/projections to say that its a hard problem or to hide behind the semantics of the terms used. And that I need to read up about your processes to understand just what a tough life you have. Or to tell a sob story about how the evil deniers are undermining you or whatever today’s excuse for such complete failure is.
If you really had a case you would be proving me wrong by pointing to the long list of achievements of climate modelling…where predictions/projections/forecasts had been proved right by subsequent events.
And if you had indeed done so, I would be second to none in my admiration for the work you had done. I started my journey around climatology because I wanted to know more about (what I naively assumed) the really cool science that allowed people to confidently assert that ‘The Science is Settled’.
But it isn’t. There is no such cool science. There are no successful forecasts. There is still no useful outcome from climate modelling. And you need to explain clearly why this is. Directing me to yet further reading about the subject does not alter that fact one iota.
It’s your ‘profession’. You explain it!
“CFC and Methane levels slowed down.”
So I guess what you are saying is that CO2 is not the climate thermostat you all have been saying it is for years.
Because CO2, after all, is the point. It is control of CO2, meaning the energy economy, that has been the holy grail of CAGW activists since at least 1988.
@lolwot ‘“Their PREDICTION was that, IF emissions, etc”
But, as I pointed out to mosher above – since they now know the correct figures for emissions, presumably they can run the model again and see if it does any better? Surely that would be an excellent way to silence its critics? Can you point us to where this was done/is being done?
“When you have finished reading up on how models are validated against climatology, you can read up on how scenarios were generated for the CMIP3 model runs.”
It seems to me, that since climate models are just mathematic representations of various theories of “climatology,” validating climatology against itself would indeed seem to “give … some insight on the problem of making predictions….” Though I don’t think that is what was meant.
But I must say I do prefer the term “climatology” to “climate science” when it comes to CAGW. It just resonates so much better its sister sciences, phrenology and astrology.
GaryM, Sorry “climatology” is a jargon word which now you mention it is misleading. “Climatology” is used to refer to an average weather over a longer period – eg ERA40 is the average weather during 40 years of the 20th Century. Basically you build your model and validate it against features of this average weather – eg. does the sea level pressure over the Pacific have the right sort of variability, does the Monsoon in India have the right distribution of dates/locations etc. etc.
Latimer,
Sorry matey. Not my job.
We collectively employ people like you to be the ‘professionals’ to work on these problems.
If it is your job (is it your job?) to make irrelevant points from the sidelines then it is worth pointing out that your points are irrelevant. You clearly did not want to discuss the work of Steve Easterbrook in the previous thread because you are required to maintain your meme that Harry_read_me underlies the whole of climate science. Steve’s evidence demonstrates that the model development process can lead to software with a remarkably low number of defects. Whether or not that speaks to the ability of the model to model the climate directly rebuts your harry_read_me example.
You come across to me as a waterfall man whose only contribution to software development is to ensure that people write documents with the right titles and put them in the right coloured folders. I understand there were a lot of them around in the 70s.
@steve milesworthy
As to the number of errors in Easterbook’s code, I am pretty relaxed. Because the real Numero Uno Problemo is that the models do not accurately predict/project/forecast the future climate. It doesn’t matter how many bugs are in the code if it still produces garbage.
I have asked you several times to produce the long list of triumphs of climate modelling that you have all been paid good money to produce. And every time you just produce a lot of irrelevancies and diversions. But precisely zero/zip/nada triumphs. After 30 years work, nothing of value has been produced.
My objection to Harry_Read_Me is simple. It shows that the general standard of IT ability in CRU is abyssmal. To even allow a dataset without a good description of what it is, where it came from. what the fields are, when we backed it up, who owns it and all the other stuff that made poor Harry’s life a misery into a data centre at all is pretty reprehensible.It does not speak well about the likely quality of any IT based (i.e all!) of the work of that department. If it has extremely sloppy processes for one piece of data, it is extremely unlikely that they have scrupulous processes for another. A houseproud person does not become a slattern overnight. Nor vice versa.
If the CRU sloppiness were just an isolated example, it might be overlooked or seen as a rogue bad apple in an otherwise ‘clean’ profession. But it doesn’t seem to be. Anybody with much professional IT experience is horrified by HRM. And many, like me, are happy to say so.
But AFAIK no climatologist has even turned a hair at what it shows. They are unconcerned about the amateurism and shoddiness it shows. I guess they just see it all as normal practice. Which reinforces my point.
‘You come across to me as a waterfall man whose only contribution to software development is to ensure that people write documents with the right titles and put them in the right coloured folders. I understand there were a lot of them around in the 70s’
‘
No idea what a ‘waterfall man’ is , so I’ll (as usual) assume that you are paying me a compliment. But my IT career didn’t really begin until early 1980 so I plead not guilty.
But if you mean that I believe that to do professional iT you need to get well-organised, approach your tasks in a logical fashion, adopt standard processes so that they become instinctive and exude a professional approach in all of it, then I plead 100% guilty. I’ve spent too many sleepless nights getting big and complex systems back on the road when some person or some combination of people have failed in one or more of these areas.
And I’m sure that you have followed the recent events at RBS with interest. A classic case of forgetting to get the basics of IT right. The code being executed may have been flawless, but it was working on the wrong thing and it seems a crucial control file was corrupted. And with widespread unhappy consequences.
I’d hope that ‘professional climatologists’ who all use IT as one of their very important tools would wish to apply the highest standards to that aspect of their work. Sadly it seems that they don’t even know they have got a problem, let alone be trying to fix it.
@steve milewsorthy
Let me ask you the direct question
‘In your opinion Is the level of IT ability revealed in Harry Read Me typical of that within climatology?’
You might also wish to reflect that pure programming ability, though important, is only a part of professional IT. There are other disciplines around systems and data management, audit, robustness and a host of others that are needed as well.
Latimer,
So as forecasters they are doubly useless. They couldn’t forecast the emissions levels correctly, nor the temperaure change arising.
Wrong on two counts. Firstly, as has been pointed out above, based on actual emissions levels they did get reaonably close to the observed temperature change and as Steven Mosher has pointed out we can identify specific weaknesses in the models which account for the difference. Secondly, you assume climate scientists should be able to accurately forecast emissions levels, but they are going to be influenced by a lot of factors – economic, social, political, which are outside the scope of climate science.
@andrew adams
‘Firstly, as has been pointed out above, based on actual emissions levels they did get reaonably close to the observed temperature change and as Steven Mosher has pointed out we can identify specific weaknesses in the models which account for the difference’
Perhaps you’d like to remind us all of exactly what the predictions were and how they matched up with actual observations. Then we can all draw our own conclusions about whether they are indeed ‘reasonably close’.
It would also be nice to see how they compared to just a simple plot following Arrhenius’s predictions from 1907.
Latimer,
Let me ask you the direct question
‘In your opinion Is the level of IT ability revealed in Harry Read Me typical of that within climatology?’
No. The code that Harry was re-interpreting sounds like an individual effort by an individual scientist with not much clue about good coding. As long as the scientist maintained a good grasp of the code and the data he might well have been fine. The problem many scientists have is seeing beyond their initial goal of getting a particular result to creating an ongoing maintainable system. So in my observation it is more an issue with academia. Five years ago, no new post-doc ever mentioned configuration management to me at recruitment events. Today about 2/3 of them have – but many have used it only tentatively.
Most of the models, though, are products of institutions and collaborations who have a wide range of users who use the model in different ways (global vs regional vs single column, climate vs forecasting, high resolution vs low resolution) and where software engineers are employed to support and test the code.
I’m surprised you’ve not heard of the waterfall model. You may also be unfamiliar with large numbers of open source projects who self-organise to develop high quality software without the need for formal external assurance. In a sense, the ability of the code to produce the right result is strongly dependent on the interest the developers have in success. Code monkeys typically don’t have as much interest as user-developers.
> Code monkeys typically don’t have as much interest as user-developers.
Nor to they have much interest in what can think IT outsourcing rationalizers who budded during thatcherism.
Steve Milesworthy,
““Climatology” is used to refer to an average weather over a longer period – eg ERA40 is the average weather during 40 years of the 20th Century. Basically you build your model and validate it against features of this average weather – eg. does the sea level pressure over the Pacific have the right sort of variability, does the Monsoon in India have the right distribution of dates/locations etc. etc.”
Comparing a climate model to past weather patters does not seem like “validating” to me. That sounds like tuning. Validating would mean running a projection/prediction based on current data, and checking it against future data.
Now, if you could set the initial parameters to 1900, and the model then fairly tracked the 20th century, that might give some initial confidence that modelers got most of the major influences right. But while “adjusting” a model until you get a fit to a particular 40 year period might be interesting, I would still not think it was validated until it predicted future conditions. Does it reflect that the modelers actually captured enough of what there is to know about the Earth’s climate that it is an actual model? Or did they simply keep making adjustments until they got the “right” result compared to a past data.
For policy reasons, who cares if a model can “predict” the temperature in 1965, a temperature the modelers knew in advance? It seems to me that what is needed is to show that there is some basis for confidence in the predictions of thermageddon in our not too distant future.
GaryM
You seem to be thinking of the models as only for being used to model global mean temperature changes. The scientists are aiming, though, to create a computerised analogue of the earth. Trying to get it to match global temperature variations *before* finalising the model would therefore be cheating as it allows you to directly check, and therefore fiddle with, the climate sensitivity of the model.
Validating against a climatology works as long as there are sufficiently large numbers of degrees of freedom in your choice of metrics. Eg. if you put in a change that is “tuned” to fix Pacific pressure it may muck up Indian monsoon or Australian drought patterns or Siberian wind patterns.
Only once you have your “analogue” of the earth are the projections done (where you run the model while increasing CO2 etc.)
Steve Milesworthy,
It is not that I think models are only used for predicting GAT changes. But it is certainly that use of them that I am criticizing. What I have read about models being used for predicting localized, short term weather, and slightly longer term weather/climate, seem a perfectly good use of what is known to date. I think a great deal of good can be done by providing localized predictions/projections. Though I would still argue they need to be validated even on more limited scales by comparisons of predictions to future data.
For a local government trying to plan for future floods, droughts, etc., any additional information could well be useful. But the models are funded by governments wedded to CAGW as a means of increasing government control over the energy economy. And they are used as one of the primary arguments for decarbonization. Take them out of that realm, and I have no great objection to them.
I suspect, however, that the funding for GCMs would drop precipitously were they severed from the CAGW agenda. So I don’t expect that to happen any time soon.
But I find this curious. “Only once you have your ‘analogue’ of the earth are the projections done (where you run the model while increasing CO2 etc.)” How do you know you have “your ‘analogue’ of the Earth,” if you have only “validated” your model on regional scales or a limited time frame, all based on prior data?
If it is so difficult to get the “right” result for a 40 year period for which you already know the answer, how can you have any real confidence about predictions 100 years into the future?
As a layman, here is what would convince me. Show me a model in which you can input all known data from say 1900 (although the data would be suspect enough itself), and show me a model that tracks the global climate to 2000 with reasonable accuracy. Then input the starting conditions of 1800, and see if there is a reasonable replication of the 19th century.
Taking the data for a specific 40 year period, and adjusting the model until it gets that period right, might be an impressive piece of programming, but it would not give me any confidence that it can predict our future climate.
I guess what I see is that climate scientists use models to learn as much as they can about individual aspects of climate, forcings, feedbacks, etc. But even if you get each individual aspect of the climate right, it is the chaotically complex combination of all the factors, not to mention the known unknowns and unknown unknowns, that make me doubt our ability to construct an accurate analogue at all. That is why I would want to see validation of predictions against future data to convince me that models have value on a global, long term scale.
Latimer,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lessons-from-past-climate-predictions-ipcc-far.html
@andrew adams
Thank you for the link to the article in sceptical science.
It seems to be written in fluent climatologese, which means that it is near incomprehensible to the interested laymen. But if I get a spare hour to deconstruct it into what each paragraph actually says, and especially to replot the graphs with a common origin (some graphs appear to have their origin in the year 1765, some in 1880 and some in 1990 for unexplained reasons), I will see how well the predictions actually compare with observations.
But I think that I have already seen signs of circularity in the reasoning. You cannot use the model to estimate the climate sensitivity while simultaneously using the derived estimate of sensitivity to prove the model right. Its one or the other, but not both.
Apropos the IT in climate science, Latimer comments :
If the CRU sloppiness were just an isolated example, it might be overlooked or seen as a rogue bad apple in an otherwise ‘clean’ profession. But it doesn’t seem to be. Anybody with much professional IT experience is horrified by HRM. And many, like me, are happy to say so. But AFAIK no climatologist has even turned a hair at what it shows. They are unconcerned about the amateurism and shoddiness it shows. I guess they just see it all as normal practice.
Pretty much the same applies to the deep vein of fraud in the profession as a whole, revealed by Climategate. If it was just Jones and Mann and a few others fiddling the science process, and loads of other crying foul and calling for sanctions against them, we could accept that it was just a few rotten apples, and this an isolated event. But by and large this has not happened. Most climate scientists haven’t turned a hair over Climategate (and the various official coverups of it). They are unconcerned at dishonesty, suggesting they see it as normal practice.
GaryM
Though I would still argue they need to be validated even on more limited scales by comparisons of predictions to future data.
“Validation” is another jargon word. What people tend to mean when “validating” climate software is checking they are fit for the purpose intended – ie. to be an analogue of the real climate. Validating that they correctly match future climate is a further scientific test that is of course important, and helps the process of identifying which bits of the physical representations in the model need improving. But that sort of validation has to be done after the basic science of the particular model version has been fixed.
The method of validation against “average climate” is an important protection against a scientist (inadvertently or otherwise) “fixing” the model so it gives low or high sensitivity. The uncertainties of emissions and aerosols through the 18th and 19th are severe enough that both high sensitivity *and* low sensitivity models can plausibly track the global mean temperature. So the test does not help you choose the model that will predict future climate under a given set of emissions etc. It only forces you to fix the sensitivity of your model to match the amount of aerosols/greenhouse gases that were *believed* to be around during the 20th Century.
Sorry matey. Not my job.
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof
@lolwot
‘The fact the world did indeed warm seems to have slipped your mind’
Nope. But Arrhenius predicted that the world would warm in 1907. Well before we had climate models or computers to run them.
Please explain how the failed predictions of 1990 onwards were somehow an improvement on his work over a a century ago.
And colour me unconvinced that getting a 5-2 bet right (temperature up, temperature down, stay the same) is proof of a great measure of skill.
@jch
‘Not trying to persuade you. Do not want to persuade you. Want you where you belong on the wrong side of history.’
With an attitude like that you are the sceptics best friend. Since (I assume) that the actions you would wish us to take can only be determined collectively, then it seems very unlikely that you will ever persuade anyone to your cause.
You might (though I think it is extremely unlikely) eventually have the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so’. But that will be tempered with the knowledge that you did not do all you could have to persuade the rest of us of the rightness of your cause.
To be a prophet crying in the wilderness is a romantic, but ultimately futile, notion. Hope you enjoy it.
Steven: It seems to me that there are two issues being conflated here.
1. Someone makes a scenario and says, “If X, Y, and Z are in this range, A will be in this range”. Down the road 20 years, X, Y, and Z did not get into that range, and neither did A.
2. Twenty years ago, someone made some scenarios that they felt extremely likely to be fulfilled. In fact, so much that they started politicking and advocating for action to prevent that scenario from happening. Some of them got arrested in civil disobedience, they felt so strongly. Some of them committed wire fraud. Some of them prevented dissenting opinions from being heard, and got “opponents” fired or forced to resign. They pulled out all of the stops because this scenario was so horrifying and perhaps irreversible — catastrophic if you will. Oh yeah, the scenario turned out to not be applicable because X, Y, and Z didn’t happen.
You are arguing about issue #1, and correctly so. If I throw out 20 scenarios for the future, you can’t say that I made 20 predictions. Essentially, I’ve only made a prediction once the conditions of my scenario are fulfilled. Very true.
But what’s happened over the last 20 years in climate science has been more like issue #2. People made nicely-qualified scenarios, but have acted as if they were predictions, and have demanded that others behave as if they were predictions. Some are now talking as if they were predictions, and it’s something of a technicality.
Even more, things like the IPCC have then predicted (not scenario’d, if that’s a phrase) glaciers melting by a certain date, etc.
And no, saying “if things continue at the current rate” does not a scenario make: it is a prediction. All predictions depend on things being, well, predictable, so always include some kind of “all other things being equal”, or “things continuing at the current rate” or some qualification like that.
I wish you could edit posts… In summary, I’d say:
Bottom line, Steven, is that it feels like many rather obnoxious Climate Establishment types have been hawking these scenarios as predictions for years now. It’s totally understandable that some skeptics would now ALSO treat these scenarios as forecasts and say that they were wrong.
You thus seem to be the lawyer coming in and saving folks on a technicality: “Yes, yes, they implied that these were forecasts and acted as if these were forecasts, and advocated as if they were forecasts, but in fact they weren’t forecasts and therefore you should stop treating them as such.”
You’re right as far as you go, but your narrowly focusing on a part of the landscape that would have actually been rather unremarkable if it was treated merely as scenarios with unknown probabilities of fulfillment.
Yes, Wayne. And if reality had turned out to be anywhere near their projections, it would have been proof enough to send any remaining deniers to concentration camps.
yes, and you are wrong.
1. The prediction in 1990 was conditional:
A) IFF BAU forcings obtain. The projected about 1.5Watts of additional
forcing between 1990 and 2015. we havent see that.
B) IFF C02 has a response of 6.3ln(C02). this estimate was revised
with Myhre’s work in the late 90, to 5.3ln(C02)
2. The prediction was EXPLICITLY targeted at 2025 and 2100. approx
1C with error bars you IGNORE.
3. The prediction was for surface temperature, YOU quote tropospheric
4. They explicitly remarked that the rise would NOT be continous but that
there could be variations up and down.
The best knowledge in 1990 wasnt very good. People learn by making predictions with the best tools they have an revising them as they go forward. If you want to fair about it there is PLENTY to point out about
what we didnt known in 1990. Good criticisms of our current state of knowledge are important. Misrepresentations of work done in 1990 reflects more poorly on you than it does the science
“3. The prediction was for surface temperature, YOU quote tropospheric”
Isn’t the trop supposed to be warming 1.5x faster?
Ken M
Yes. According to GH theory (as confirmed by IPCC).
But, in actual fact, it has warmed more slowly than the surface.
Yet, despite this observed fact, IPCC AR4 WG1 Ch.3 tells us that the troposphere warmed faster than the surface (in keeping with GH theory).
Was this mistake intentional or just a screw-up?
(Take your pick.)
Max
“The best knowledge in 1990 wasnt very good.”
The problem is, measured properly, what “we” know now isn’t much better now.
What CAGWers want to do is compare what we know now compared to what we knew at some prior date. But this is poor logic. A senior in high school knows exponentially more about science that does a first grader. But he still doesn’t know much.
If you judge our knowledge against what there is to know, rather than what we knew before, then you get a completely different perspective. But then, that takes humility.
We have made similar great strides in understanding the functioning of the human brain. Compared to what we knew 50 years ago, our knowledge is impressive. Compared to what there is to know, not so much.
Whatever we do know, we don’t know how the climate works. Not by a long shot.
Exactly true. As on date, best knowledge of 1990 wasn’t good. As of 20 years later, today’s best knowledge won;t be good and so on and on. So don’t make predictions in the first place and accept that most of what one knows about the climate is not good enough. Don’t treat such model predictions based on imperfect knowledge as gospel and call for policy decisions to made on that basis which is exactly what AGW supporting scientist activists are doing. And don’t even talk about predicting for 2025 and 2100 when you know bugger all about what you’re doing now.
If the predictions were changing all the time you’d have a point. But the predictions are only changing by a relative amount, not an order of magnitude. The best estimate for the range of climate sensitivity has changed little in 20 years.
The best estimate for the range of climate sensitivity has changed little in 20 years.
Indeed Ghil 2008 was quite succinct eg.
As the relatively new science of climate dynamics evolved through the 1980s and 1990s, it became quite clear from observational data, both instrumental and paleoclimatic, as well as model studies| that Earth’s climate never was and is unlikely to ever be in equilibrium. The three successive IPCC reports (1991 [2], 1996, and 2001 [3]) concentrated therefore, in addition to estimates of equilibrium sensitivity, on estimates of climate change over the 21st century, based on several scenarios of CO2 increase over this time interval, and using up to 18 general circulation models (GCMs) in the fourth IPCC Assessment Report (AR4) [4].
The GCM results of temperature increase over the coming 100 years have stubbornly resisted any narrowing of the range of estimates, with results for Ts in 2100 as low as 1:4 K or as high as 5:8 K, according to the Third Assessment Report. The hope in the research leading up to the AR4 was that a set of suitably defined better GCMs” would exhibit a narrower range of year-2100 estimates, but this does not seem to have been the case.
The difficulty in narrowing the range of estimates for either equilibrium sensitivity of climate or for end-of-the-century temperatures is clearly connected to the complexity of the climate system, the multiplicity and nonlinearity of the processes and feedbacks it contains, and the obstacles to a faithful representation of these processes and feedbacks in GCMs. The practice of the science and engineering of GCMs over several decades has amply demonstrated that any addition or change in the model’s parametrizations” i.e., of the representation of subgrid-scale processes in terms of the model’s explicit, large-scale variables may result in noticeable changes in the model solutions’
behavior
Substituting ar5 for ar4 and the finding is the same.
So much for keeping an open mind to new papers, such as Spencer + Braswell (2007) and Lindzen + Choi (2009+2011), which show that CERES and ERBE satellite observations confirm that CS is much lower than was estimated by the IPCC model simulations.
“Science” changes continuously.
“Dogma” dies not.
Max
lolwot, “The estimates of climate sensitivity have change little over the past 20 years.” Since it seems that papers published in 2005 to 2010 are using the same data that was used in papers published in 1996 to 1998, there is the lost decade of climate science to consider. Wasn’t there recently a post on a paper that used data ending in 1995 that was used in two other papers that was missing in action? It would seem if the climate “consensus” disliked the conspiracy word they would be moving into the 21 century data. Though a 19th century theory may not really need new data since it was perfect in every aspect to begin with, right?
Typo:
should read: “Dogma does not.”
Dr. Curry, it might help your readers to trace a little of the notion of “consensus” in the history of international organizations (IO’s) and the lateral transfer in IOs of that notion from largely political spheres into scientific pronouncements.
All of us who follow international relations are aware that the largest IO conferences make decisions by “consensus,” not by calling for a formal vote. That is true regardless of subject matter and is by no means confined to the world of climate or even environmental issues.
The concept of “consensus” as a decisionmaking tool in international conferences arose out of the dramatic expansion of the number of member States starting in the late 1960s/70s, coupled with a de facto requirement of unanimity often found in IOs. As you will appreciate, the pressure to find a means of permitting decisions as membership in IOs grew was strong, as otherwise those organizations would be unable to make decisions in larger settings at all in light of ability of a small number of objecting States to block action – consensus avoids a vote and thus permits an objecting State to maintain its opposition in other forums while not bringing the actions of the IO in the relevant area to a halt. “Consensus” as a decisionmaking tool is used in organizations as disparate as the UN and NATO, and numerous IOs in between.
A random selection of articles on the role of “consensus” in IO decisionmaking brought to light the following cites – I offer them as a way to begin a search into the scholarly literature on this topic rather than endorsing the quality of the particular papers – Movsisyan, Decisionmaking by Consensus in International Organizations as a Form of Negotiation, http://www.noravank.am/upload/pdf/337_en.pdf, and Lockwood Payton, Consensus Procedures in International Organizations, http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/14381. There are many, many others,
The jump from consensus as an IO decisionmaking tool for public policy pronouncements (often watered down to lowest common denominator statements, as is common in large group decisionmaking) to scientific pronouncements covering topics such as climate change is perhaps not surprising, (whether or not justified). IOs and Governments see the climate issue as a public policy challenge. Moreover, as you and your readers well know, the dividing line between science and policy in this area is rather hard to find.
Additionally, many diplomats and scholars see that “consensus” in IO decisions encompasses a negotiating process among members with strong interests in the relevant issues. The extent to which that aspect of “consensus” decisionmaking has transferred into the world of climate is of course highly controversial.
But to understand why the IPCC has consistently employed consensus as a decisionmaking tool, it is helpful to understand the motivation for using that tool in IOs. That motive had little to do at inception with science and much to do with managing the consequences of the exploding number of independent States in the post-colonial world.
I hope this is useful.
regards,
MK
Mark, thanks for your comments. The main issue of contention is the scientific consensus. This gets convoluted with consensus decision making, which you correctly point out is often used. The convolution occurs in the context of the linear truth to power model. I am trying to clarify this in the paper
It’s a matter of the human relationship with the connection between Cause and Effect. By fabricating a make-believe consensus about global warming the Left created a real and abiding skepticism.
Creating a fear of climate created a climate of fear. That can only end one way: badly because when nothing deeply matters anymore the human connection is lost.
No society can survive that loss. From our beachhead on the 21st century that loss is the Left’s most horrible accomplishment–i.e., the devaluation of the connection between human effort and appreciation. It is inescable that severing of pain and impulse has caused moral and economic ruin in Western culture.
Notice how mark comment in the language of diplomats. Lots of verbage with little meaningful content.
Good analysis, Mark. I summarize the IO consensus process as accepting that which no party vetoes. Here it is important that the members of the IPCC are States, not scientists, as it too is an IO.
But this concept of consensus cannot be extended to a scientific community, whose members are people and which has no formal organization, except metaphorically. If it is then the fact that some skeptical scientists veto CAGW is sufficient to show there is no consensus.
As with several other central concepts in the climate debate, the concept of scientific consensus is completely confused. But this confusion is useful to the CAGW movement.
1. You do not seem here to appreciate the force of Leher’s criticism of consensus. He says that an unforced consensus on some proposition P does provide some reason for believing it true but that a contrived consensus does not, in fact because of it takeson the character of a conspiracy it may actually be a reason for believing P false.
2. There is a fallacy – I call it the “we” fallacy – that there exists an agent co-extensive with a given consensus. But for the global consensus (supposedly) crafted by the IPCC there is no corresponding global agent. The UN cannot even agree action to stop massacres in Syria – a small, weak country.
I find this “we” fallacy all over the place in policy discussions and I think it does much harm in deflecting attention from policies that might actually appeal to every major agent in the world community. In speaking “consensus to power” there may be one consensus but there are many powers.
Incidentally I note that Chinese scientists are much less “alarmist” than US/UK/EU ones. They are speaking to a different power?
Very interesting stuff – thanks..
Eli (actually Brian) has the last word on Singer (second video).
Tempterrain July 15, 3.46am:
Tempterrain, Greg, you asked for feedback on yr video, feedback’s good . sometimes not what we like but it’s trial and error all the way down isn’t it?
What you’ve drawn up, it seems to me, is a kind of apocalypse grid and there are a couple of things I’d say about that.
We’re sometimes warned about thinking inside the box and Tempterrain, I think you’ve fallen into that trap. ‘Out here’ is irreducible complexity that yr boxes are formulating, ‘in there,’ as reducible simplicity. Box 1 contains the problem you specify, CAGW is the peril that may hit us. But what about if it’s not CAGW that is the future peril, what about other known possible problems, HIV or some other global viral epidemic? What about a possible new ice age etc, etc? Do we need multiple policy grids? Insurance is getting to be mighty expensive! And then there are the unknowns, the black swans…
Another issue; in yr solution box, you might bullet point some necessary draconian measures needed to reduce carbon to pre industrial levels. Is this achievable and what are the political, economic and social results, can you honestly go close to predicting them?
Seems to me that what you are suggesting is a kind of back to the middle ages seige mentality, walled city living, closed society. I’m suggesting that there’s irreducible complexity and we need to be healthy, wealthy and wise, ie adaptable and innovative, to deal with whatever uncertainty the future holds. And if we think we’ve got a good record in predicting the future, read Nassin Talib …experts are often the worst! All the best to you, Temterrain.
Can there be a concensus on a missing tractor?
Bob
How about consensus on discovered medieval farmhouses, buried for centuries in the GRL permafrost?
Max
If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. The IPCC consensus hammer keeps looking for the CO2 trace gas radiative transfer model nail to hammer home. What climate science needs of course are more tools; expand one’s repertoire. Quit always looking for the final nail , the final nail that will hold everything together.
Having other tools, of course, requires different expertise. Climate scientists claiming to be jack(olines) of all trades means being master of none. Statisticians, fluid dynamisists (OCaptain’s call for a glossary) hydrologists if you were, are experts who readily come to mind. There obviously are others and I don’t mean climate science needs more drilling in ice cores or more foresters, agronomists, deep sea diving subs although this detail may eventually be informative. To get at this wicked problem, climate science needs just plain old folk looking at ozone, UV radiation, mathematicians who delve into complex and abrupt regime change, to name a few. A few bloggers thrown in to critique the mess.
Consensus seems to degrade the intellectual climate in the field.
Judith,
that is a masterful analysis of what is wrong – theoretically – with the IPCC “consensus” approach. What strikes me as being missing is an analysis of where in fact the process went off the rails. Why have we ended up with uncertain and in many cases flawed science being promoted as dogma by the worlds leading scientific institutions? Why has the term “sceptic” become a term of disapprobation and indeed transformed into “denier”?
Part of the answer to that question is implicit in your paper. Part may be outside its scope. But it seems to me clear that the involvement of politics and politicians – and particularly their money – has corrupted the scientific process.
As you point out the IPCC was set up to generate a “consensus” and that is a bad idea. But why did the majority of climate scientists, and then the wider scientific community embrace that flawed process?
How many chairs of “climate science” were there globally, in 1980? I don’t know but I suspect the answer is none – and certainly no where near the number there are now. The scientists who now call themselves “Professor of Climate Science” did not do their first degrees in “climate science”. They did not do their PhDs in “climate science”. Before the AGW issue arose they called themselves things like “paleobotanist” or “geophysicist” or “oceanographer”. Until quite recently there was not a single discipline of “climate science”. There were researchers from several different fields interested in climate, whether in the geological past, the archaeological past, or the present. Pretty much nobody was trying to model what the climate would do in the next hundred years – because no one was interested.
Now, I am not saying that useful science was not being done. I am saying that climate science was not a single discipline, it did not have much prestige, or get much funding, certainly compared with say particle physics, or astronomy. All that changed with the AGW scare. Suddenly politicians were throwing huge amounts of cash at “climate science” in order to answer the question – what will the climate do in the next century?
And I am not saying there were no first-class brains in climatology. Clearly there were. But there were also a number of people who probably never expected glittering academic careers (and who had perhaps not paid much attention in their statistics lectures) who out of the blue found themselves in charge of departments with multi-million dollar budgets.
Modern “climate science” was effectively created by politicians in order to answer the AGW question. And under those circumstances the “right answer” is that it exists, and it is dangerous.
And the rest of the scientific community? Most are frankly too busy with their own research to learn anything about climate. What is the incentive to rain on someone else’s parade? If more funding is going into science then all to the good. And astronomers, say, might have good reason to be nervous. Untangling the origins of the universe is going to be of no immediate use to anyone. But the climatologists are “saving the planet”. Probably best not to pick a fight.
I am not sure if that kind of analysis would be appropriate in this paper. But it is going to have to be addressed eventually.
Gareth, good points.
Judith: There may be some value to a section of the relationship between uncertainty and consensus. If mean global climate might warm 2.0-11.0 degF (values I just read in the NAS “consensus” statement), does that “consensus” provide anything of value for policymakers when the uncertainty is so large? Does the mid-point of such a range have any meaning when the range is so large? Given that societal costs increase exponentially with warming, cost-benefit analysis for reducing GHG emissions will be disproportionately weighted by the low probability of 10+ degF warming. Unfortunately, there is no scientific consensus on what a reasonable upper limit should be for climate sensitivity. Isn’t consensus in the face of such massive uncertainty almost meaningless?
Frank,
I like your question. It gets to the heart of what I think is the correct way forward.
I may be thinking far too simplistically, but this is how I see it. First, I say that, in the final analysis, cost-benefit is the most important information that must inform policy decisions.
The outcome of cost-benefit analysis is a probability distribution. We should base our policy decisions on the central estimates and make allowance for high-consequence but low-probability (the tail of the distribution) with insurance. This is what Bjorn Lomborg and others has been saying for a long time. [I’ve explained in comments on previous threads what insurance might look like: e.g. http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/06/05/conservatives-who-think-seriously-about-the-planet/#comment-111744 ]
The cost-benefit probability distribution uses the distributions of all the input parameters, such as: climate sensitivity, damage function, population, GDP, emissions rates, etc.
We can move forward with this method and using the best information at the time. We could make good policy now, if we could do this analysis properly and to the standard appropriate for multi trillion dollar investment decisions.
However, there has been little attention to doing cost-benefit analyses. The damage function, especially, has very high uncertainty. It is the biggest contributor to the uncertainty in the costs in Nordhaus’s work (see Table 7-2, p130, http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf )
(Note, for these analyses Nordhaus used normal distributions but then checked the error compared with using the climate sensitivity asymmetrical distribution (such as depicted here http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/box-10-2-figure-1.html ). He found the error introduced by using the normal distribution instead of the asymmetrical distribution was small. He acknowledged that the analyses would be improved in future work. He has done some more work since then and published it in 2012 “Economic Policy in the Face of Severe Tail Events” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2011.01544.x/full
I imagine there is more in the pipeline being prepared for AR5. Hopefully Judith may publish a thread on this subject soon (hint )
I would like to encourage more focus on the cost benefit analyses.
Peter, the biggest problem is that we do no know what the distributions of the input parameters look like. That is, the uncertainty presented by each distribution is very different from the meta-uncertainty in the very form of the distribution. Meaningful cost benefit analysis requires that the form of each distribution be reasonably well estimated, which cannot be done for climate change.
For an extreme example, I think the real world sensitivity distribution peaks at zero. Plug that in and you get something like a zero benefit to decarbonizing, with an enormously bad cost benefit ratio. The peak of the output is going to be determined primarily by the locations of the peaks in the input distributions, but these are unknown.
Many years ago I helped write the rules for cost benefit analysis of US Federal water resources projects, such as for flood control, navigation, irrigation, etc. Reasonable certainty is required and that is completely missing in the climate change case. Guessing the probability distributions does not change this fact.
David Wojick,
I don’t agree. I also don’t think it’s constructive to throw up our hands, and say it’s all too hard so we can’t do any analysis. To me, that means leave the field to the Greens and alarmist to run their scare campaigns based on adjectives.
I am not concerned about what the cost/benefit analysis might show. I want it done and done to the best of our ability.
One of the things it will show is which of the various input parameters is causing the greatest uncertainty in the results. That’s good to know. Then we can focus our research effort and resources in the most important aspects.
Nordhaus’s and Tol’s work, for example suggests the greatest uncertainty in the damage cost estimates is caused by the uncertainties in the damage parameter (the damage costs per degree of warming). If that is correct, then we need to do some better estimating in that area. Get the engineers and quantity surveyors involved in properly estimating the costs of, for example, a rise in sea level of a few millimetres per year over a hundred years (with rapid rises at times, etc).
A somewhat cynical view, perhaps, but it must be established (a) what are the natures of the costs and benefits; (b) who bears the costs; who reaps the benefits; (c) how are costs/benefits apportioned and (d) who is making the determination. The AGW issue has already been very beneficial to a number people, agencies and organizations in a variety of ways. Are these the folks to be trusted to dispassionately determine C/B in regard to mitigation/adaptation? History would suggest “No.” The issue is too politicized and there is too much “free” public money floating around. The issue, I suspect, will be resolved politically, not via calculation of C/B.
That being said, I would still be interested in seeing the various parties’ C/B calcs; some are very likely (92.31%) to be quite entertaining.
Peter: Imagine that it is 1910 and your government is trying to project (using cost benefit analysis) how to invest money in such a way that the world would be a better place in the second-half of the 20th century. Seems pretty crazy to me. Even with 20/20 hindsight, what would you do? Invest in the US stock market and spend the money later? Pay for regulations on hazardous waste disposal (assuming you knew what waste was hazardous)?
Now it is 2010, and you are asking governments to do a cost-benefit analysis for investing in low-carbon energy sources that are needed to prevent problems mostly in the second half of the 21st century. (If you are Lomborg, you are choosing from a wide variety of investments.)
Our governments have little practical experience with long-term investments. A long-term investment for a government is a decade or two. Old-age pensions and healthcare costs are relatively easy to project, but they are threatening to bankrupt many developed countries and local governments. The US got to the moon in a decade, but the subsequent space program is so poorly organized that we currently can’t send a man to the space station, much less the moon or Mars. The Interstate Highway System and the Internet were initially viewed as defense projects. After more than a half-century. the US still doesn’t have a permanent repository for nuclear waste and isn’t considering reprocessing spent fuel so that some of the most hazardous waste can be used to make power rather than add millennia to the storage problem. Kyoto and Waxman-Markey?
Personally, I’d put my faith in a fully-rebated carbon tax that rises with temperature (see McKitrick) and possibly sea level to potentially the punitive levels when/if the observed rate of climate change becomes threatening and forces societies to abandon carbon fuels for many purposes. If climate models are right, investors will make better long-term decisions that climate activists and politicians.
Frank,
So you’d prefer to make decisions on your beliefs than any sort of rational analysis would you? You’d prefer to respond to scaremongering adjectives, eh? You’d rather waste your wealth – on policies that cannot be implemented and won’t achieve the changes you expect – causing millions of unnecessary deaths (like the DDT ban which was also based on emotional adjectives and scaremongering), yes?. You are not concerned that by reducing our wealth we’d be less able to handle the other risks we face, true?
Why are you advocating such policies without a clue about the likely costs and benefits?
Peter Lang and Frank: I thought Frank was right on target until at the very end, he proposed a carbon tax. Frank pointed out the inability of governments to do long-term planning. He described failures of the space program, highways, nuclear waste and pension and health care. He might have concluded that the world is poor. The U. S. is a poor country. It cannot provide its people with an adequate standard of living and it must borrow heavily just to pay annual operating costs. U. S. debt at personal, regional, state and federal levels is threatening. Federal debt is $48,000 per citizen. If it were not for periodic bubbles in paper assets we’d be in permanent economic depression (and maybe we are headed there). The world lives on debt. Most of the debt will never be paid back. The whole economic system is a Ponzi scheme. Adding a tax to to make energy more expensive will add to our woes.
“Given that societal costs increase exponentially with warming….”
An assumption big enough to drive a truck through.
Just one of many.
Faustino july 16 2 36 am Yes, Faustino, ‘Divided we stand.’ :-)
Soon the new media laws will only allow pc cartoons – not funny. i look forward to reading yr letter in The Australian and I think I’ll send one meself.
Beth, the letter was published with minor changes and under my “real-world” name.
OT, but perhaps germane to better climate science outcomes: from BBC:
The UK government is to develop plans to make publicly funded research results freely available to all. Currently, scientists and members of the public have to pay the leading scientific journals to see research that has already been paid for from the public purse. Under new proposals the government will pay publishers a fee each time a paper is published. In return the research will be available to those who wish to see it. The total cost of the subsidy is estimated to be £50m a year which will be taken from funds that would otherwise have been spent on research. ….
Many universities and research organisations encourage their scientists to make their published research freely available on-line on repositories they provide. But many researchers do not do this because some academic publishers say that they will not publish any research if it is also available on a repository. Such repositories are important because they contain all the experimental data that was collected during the experiment as well as its results. It is the raw data that is as important if not more so to other researchers as the results themselves in order to make full use of the information to help their own research. It is unclear at this stage whether publishers will allow access to the raw data or impose a charge for access to this information.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18860276
Pay for the same research twice. What a great idea. It would be like GE funding research, the employee then publishes the data in a professional journal, and then GE has to pay the journal for the results of the research it paid for.
Gee, a business run that way would probably be headed to bankruptcy.
Oh, wait a minute….
GE gets the results directly from its employee, so no publication is required for that part. GE pays the journal to get the results of other people’s researchers, not its own. It pays because it costs money to publish those results. Under the UK scheme, GE will now have to pay to have it’s employee’s research published, something it gets for free now, but it will get the other people’s research for nothing. Whether this flip-flop is better remains to be seen. The transition is going to be expensive.
In any case no one is paying for the same research twice. Research and publishing are two different activities, and two different businesses. See http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/07/16/predictable-problems-the-uks-move-to-open-access/ and feel free to comment.
So all government funded climate scientists have been delivering their data and code to the government for release to the tax payers who paid for it?
Someone alert the media.
Oh wait, that isn’t happening at all. David Wojick just thinks pubic funds belong to the rent seekers who get the checks, or at least their political patrons.
I’ll type slowly so you those of you brainwashed by decades of progressive education can follow along.
According to the comment to which I responded, the UK intends to use tax dollars to pay for research to be done. Then, once it is published, pay additional tax dollars so the tax payers who paid for it can see it.
The analogy to GE would be GE paying for the research, then paying again so its shareholders can see and use it.
For those of you who vote Democrat, or consider yourselves moderates or independents, that’s the tax payers paying twice for the same research.
It’s not Barack Obama’s money, or David Cameron’s, or Pachauri’s, or Hansen’s or Mann’s. Or even David Wojick’s.
Sorry Gary, but I have no idea what point you are trying to make. I thought you were talking about the new UK policy. My mistake.
GaryM
I think the general point here is that the act of publishing some science (providing public access), involves a cost over and above doing the science. ‘Curatorship’ seems to be the emerging term.
So the question is : should this be taken from existing budgets, or should additional funds be allocated ?
Personally I think the scientists should be held responsible for their own work being published. Perhaps though they need more money.
Very few article repositories contain raw data. I do not know of any, although there are a few specialized processed data repositories. Data is expensive to curate. Somebody has to pay for that.
Publishers do not publish content that has already been given away because they have to sell what they publish in order to pay the cost of publication. It is a business, even if a not for profit business, as many are. It is about a $10 billion/year industry and somebody has to pay for that. If the UK wants the researchers to pay, instead of the readers, so be it. We will see how that turns out. Same for data.
The BBC article is atrocious. It is not a proposal; it is an actual policy, but there is nothing in it about data, or repositories per se. Here it is:
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/RCUK%20_Policy_on_Access_to_Research_Outputs.pdf
Faustino, Bishop Hill has a post on Uk plan to release publically funded research date.
Judith:
Speaking of consensus….are you aware of the current WUWT thread on the IAC’s finding re the IPCC, and the “quiet” change that has been initiated within the latter?
Post intro: Foreword: “Readers may recall that we covered the InterAcademy Council finding here on WUWT, in IAC slams IPCC process, suggests removal of top officials followed by IPCC’s Pachauri should resign for “failures of leadership” Now, with virtually no notice, the IPCC has implemented a change in response to these findings, essentially admitting their past work was flawed both procedurally and factually. As a sidenote, we have Donna Laframboise to thank for much of the work in uncovering flaws in the IPCC. – Anthony”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/16/by-its-actions-the-ipcc-admits-its-past-reports-were-unreliable/#more-6
Pokerguy,
Yes. Great credit to Donna.
And there is another behind the scenes guy that should also be thanked (although he won’t than me for pointing it out and raising his profile). He is a very bright ex naval commander in the Royal Australian Navy. A radar engineer. He’s made a sort of data base, but it isn’t like other data bases. It has an ability to bring enormous amounts of data together and filter out just what information is needed and is relevant for making the decision to shoot or not shoot down a target.
What he does with this thingy is include:
• all the content of IPCC AR4,
• all the reviewers comments
• all the IPCC responses to the comments (that are available)
• all IAC report
• all the NGOs, their owners, editors, and the authors of all their climate related articles
• all the journals, their owners and their other affiliations
• all the journal editors and all their other affiliations
• all the Climate Gate emails
• all the government’s budgets, and all the agencies and the grants that the government is funding,
Then he can pull out
• Who’s who, who’s related to whom, who’s subordinate to whom, whose funded by whom (Maurice Strong comes out at the top and the thingy shows how many steps removed are people from Maurice Strong)
• Who’s said what in the past
• How many of the IPCC references and citations are to grey literature, are authored by a person of concern, published by a journal of concern, a modelling study or simulation, etc.
http://accessipcc.com/
Drill down into the AR4 working groups, then chapters, then sections and note the statistics on NPR (non peer reviewed etc).
I understand this provided a lot of information for Donna. [However, in here there are incorrect attributions (as explained); but Donna checked thoroughly her work before publishing I understand)]
He has pulled out the key statements in the IAC Report and catagorised them and listed them under headings of:
• political interference
• bias
• uncertainty
• Conflct of interest
• Management
http://tome22.info/IAC-Report/IAC-Report-Overview-Short.html
There is stacks more. Start here: http://tome22.info/
A word of caution. He is one of those engineers and scientists who is always doing stuff and never focused on finishing anything. So this is a tool that is always in a state of development and never ready for publication. Take it in that light.
Peter
That proves the theory that science and politics never mix!
It’s a pity that Joe Bast over-eggs the pudding, as well as making many valid criticisms of the IPCC, he makes some points re current work which Steven Mosher, who is involved in it, refutes. Those who want to hold the IPCC to higher standards must make sure that their own are impeccable.
… imPekkaPirilable, even.
Another excerpt, right up your alley of course:
“Another problem documented by the IAC is the use of phony “confidence intervals” and estimates of “certainty” in the Summary for Policy Makers (pp. 27-34). Those of us who study the IPCC reports knew this was make-believe when we first saw it in 2007. Work by J. Scott Armstrong on the science of forecasting makes it clear that scientists cannot simply gather around a table and vote on how confident they are about some prediction, and then affix a number to it such as “80% confident.” Yet that is how the IPCC proceeds.”
It’s can be easier to find such statements in the IAC report if you start from here http://tome22.info/IAC-Report/IAC-Report-Overview-Short.html and drill down to see the comment in the document.
Sobering thought the satalite temperatures aren’t going up though our own sometimes do… it’s almost high noon. Say – where are Chief Hydrologist and climate warrior, Captain Kangaroo these days? Hmm, probably at the rodeo kicking up their heels…sometimes yer get tired of the war. I’m thinking about heading off fer a while meself.)
er ‘satelite’ need a break mes amigos (
I tried a sabbatical Bethster and lasted less than a day. I’m starting to think I might need some sort of climate blog rehab. I kicked the booze, then the drugs back in he 80’s. This might be harder…
The consensus is Northern summer time Arctic Ice extent and mass is in a death spiral into oblivion. What is the root cause? FIX IT…………………
Here in Australia we are having cold mornings. The greenhouse effect of CO2 has not helped us in making the cold mornings bearable. However, in cloudy mornings it is bearable. How come I can experience the warming effect of clouds, but not that of AGW’s CO2?
For Mosher:
http://itia.ntua.gr/getfile/1212/1/documents/2012EGU_homogenization_1.pdf
SHAP indicted. Enjoy.
Late to this discussion, but for me the first question is always consensus on WHAT? I created a graphic to illustrate the different questions — just in the science — that have entirely different levels of scientific agreement. Posted here: Dot Earth: Can Clearer Language Clear Up Climate Disputes? http://nyti.ms/LoFa3F
And of course that’s just the science. Questions abut the level of DANGER are bounded to some extent by science (including uncertainties), but the answers are a function of values. So a consensus there has little to do with the science itself, and much more with finding common interests among parties with divergent world views. As in Roger Pielke Jr.’s Walter Lippman rule of politics: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/09/understanding-politicization-of-science.html
Andy, thanks much for these links
I appreciate your article. However, re statistical difference between Democrats and Republicans on “the phrases “global warming” or “climate change”.
Perhaps the republicans have spotted the “fallacy of ambiguity” and the democrats have accepted their equivalence. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ambiguit.html
or
http://www.google.com/#q=%22fallacy%20of%20ambiguity%22&nfpr=1&ei=HpoFUPmZPIX30gGL07XcCA&sqi=2&start=0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=9ed169a75f53af9b&biw=982&bih=494
The Google link has been truncated. Just Google “fallacy of ambiguity”. Sorry.
It makes a difference who is in the group that reached “consensus”.
As Chuck Swindoll observed decades ago: “Even now, a committee is meeting to decide your future, and you are not invited”.
When we practiced “consensus-building”, we followed these rules:
– All stakeholders participate.
– A facilitator assures that all participants are heard.
– A note-taker assures that all positions are captured.
– A consensus is reached if all stakeholders either agree on the decision or agree that the decision process was fair.
I do not believe that the CAGW “consensus” meets these conditions.
There being billions of stakeholders makes it difficult. Unless stakeholder means the person holding the stake they are driving into you (joke).
David Wojick | July 17, 2012 at 4:18 pm |
Billions of stakeholders is not an issue for the consensus of Capitalism, a fully scalable system of democratic decision making.
Fix a price on the proposition by privatizing the Carbon Cycle. Consensus will come by the Law of Supply and Demand.
All participants will be heard by the power of their contribution to the Economy noted and captured in their wages and spending, and the fairness of the process is implicit should the right role of government to maintain a level playing field in the Market be carried out.
The CRAGW “consensus” would be easy to establish by a simple fee and dividend system, with all revenues collected from CO2E fees distributed to all stakeholders — each citizen, per capita — without exception, and with all subsidies removed from the energy sector.
See? Simple. You just lack vision.
An imposed fee and dividend system is not capitalism, rather the opposite. But you have missed the point of the entire discussion, which is there is no consensus that there is a problem, rather the opposite, a great debate. Solutions are premature at best.
David Wojick | July 18, 2012 at 7:01 am |
So, the mobile phone industry is the opposite of Capitalist?
That’s an imposed fee and dividend system, too.
Commercial television?
Radio?
There’s zero difference in principle: scarce, rivalrous, excludable resources privatized by the minimal (one wishes) level of regulation required to achieve a fair Market.
And while you keep repeating the same Big Lie of no consensus, it just won’t stick. The fact that you’re paid to promote this view to small children in public schools hardly makes you more credible.
And it doesn’t make anything about the way you ‘debate’ great, either.
BartR: Re “a simple fee and dividend system”.
From 2008/2009, this was proposed by James Hansen as the “Tax and Dividend” system. Introduction: http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=globalwarming&thread=192&post=3866
This is compared to variants of the scheme: the Turnover Tax, Cap and Trade, the Carbon Tax, the Carbon Credit (card) and Tax and Dividend: http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=globalwarming&thread=192&post=3867
In case you do not recognize the “Turnover Tax”, it was the former Soviet Union’s method for limiting Demand to that Quantity planned by the Soviet “authorities”. The Soviet Union collapsed.
__________________________________________________________
Topic: The Politics of “AGW” (Read 52,642 times)
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=192
The first 6 pages (of 131) contains posts by “Pooh” in the fall of 2008, together with replies.
This is scarcely consensus. If one thinks that a “Command Economy” is beyond the pale in the United States, see:
Garrett, Major, and AP. “Administration Warns of ‘Command-and-Control’ Regulation Over Emissions.” News. FOXNews.com, December 9, 2009. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/09/administration-warns-command-control-regulation-emissions/
Pooh, Dixie | July 19, 2012 at 12:17 pm |
Tch. I expected better of you.
OTOH, you’ve accomplished a double hattrick of logical fallacies, so that’s quite the achievement.
1. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman by misrepresenting what I said to make it easier to attack. Hansen’s proposal is not the same as mine, though I don’t deny Hansen’s proposal overlaps mine in some minor way. Nor is Cap & Trade the privatization I endorse — indeed, I think it’s perhaps only useful as an academic exercise for the most part; nor is the Turnover Tax (which is Pigouvian) at all close to privatization.
2. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause by attributing the failure of the Soviet Union to privatization. Ludicrous in the extreme.
3. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion to make such unpopular names as James Hansen and the Soviet Union touchstones you’re trying to connect to privatization.. how dramatic.. and how false.
4. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope .. Ohnoes, the implication is that if the Soviet Union had the Turnover Tax and also failed, then if the Free World has a Fee & Dividend it will collapse too! That kinda insults the intelligence even of the Denizenry. Mostly.
5. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ambiguity by turning the “tax” in the “Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax Act” (so called only because the collection of fees is carried out under the authority of the tax collecting powers of the Minister of Finance, not because it is a tax) into some dirty word linked to taxation, communism, the Soviets, and all manner of murky other irrelevancies just to strengthen your argument falsely.
6. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal with a cute horror story of the Soviet era that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Well done. I’m in awe. And yet, still expected better of you than to stoop to such tactics.
The Soviet Union collapsed. Indeed. My great aunt had a mangy old orange cat, and lived to a hundred. Was it the mange, the orange, or the cat that caused her longevity?
Excellent essay. I have not read all the comments, but picked up a few complaining that the essay is too long. I disagree. It is well written and fairly tightly argued–I did not see anything that could be condensed without obscuring the points you’re trying to make.
A particularly valuable element of this essay is the call for more transparency and active inclusion of credentialed climate (and other) scientists who have contradictory findings, data, and/or reasoning and the recognition that we live in a society in which post-normal science is in full operation. The level of vilification of skeptical scientists (when did skepticism become a bad thing in science?) is a blot on our community. We should always embrace the challenges critics present us because they may ultimately save us from our own biases.
I couldn’t help thinking of a succinct summary of your essay: “The world is messy. Deal with it on its own terms, not on yours.” The climate system is exceedingly complex. To understand it, we must make simplifying assumptions. But we must never forget that we have made those assumptions. A good part of the debate is because of the “five blind men and the elephant” effect. Society is, if possible, even more complex. Trying to make sense of a complex natural system in the context of complex societal functioning is messy indeed, but it is the reality we must live with.
To understand it, we must make simplifying assumptions. But we must never forget that we have made those assumptions.
There is a money quote :)
Better is “think outside the box but inside the envelope”. Did you say that too?
Judy Parrish,
Excellent comment. Referring to your last paragraph – your suggested summary for Judith’s essay – I have this comment:
While the climate is extremely complicated and the science is extremely complicated, the policy response does not have to be complicated, and nor should it be. Because, if it is complicated it will get no traction.
I suggest the policy response could be facilitated by getting policy relevant information distributed widely (I have a suggestion I’ll put in a separate comment).
What we need to know for policy, is, first, what are the expected damages and damage costs of ‘no mitigation’ policies (e.g. total to 2050, 2100, 2200 by world, region, country.). This can be done on best currently available information and updated as information improves. (No mitigation policy means adaptation instead).
Second, we need to know what are the estimated abatement costs for different mitigation policies? Importantly, we need to know what is the realistic probability that the proposed mitigation policy would achieve the purported results (of reduced damages).
We also need to know, quite separately, the estimated cost for an insurance policy such that if the probability of high consequence impacts increases, we can implement the insurance policy. I suspect the optimal policy may be adaptation together with RD&D on technology solutions to provide insurance in case the projections change and the threat of high damage consequences increases. The Copenhagen Consensus has been advocating this approach for a long time. I’ve suggested a major component of a relatively low-cost insurance policy here: http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/06/05/conservatives-who-think-seriously-about-the-planet/#comment-111744
In short, we need policy relevant information. Policy relevant information can be presented simply.
Peter, I don’t think we can say anything sensible about 2100, never mind 2200, and probably not about 2050. For example, the unexpected (by almost everybody) 2007 GFC and its aftermath have led to even more unexpected falls in industrialised countries’ emissions than anyone could have anticipated. The sudden increased accessibility to low-cost gas in the US allows lower-emission energy than coal-fired power stations (so don’t waste time on carbon-capture-and-storage). No-one (or almost no-one) projected the virtual disappearance of warming over the last 14 years or so. In short, all we know about the future is that it will not be what we expect.
As an economic policy adviser, I’ve argued for years that policies should increase our capacity to deal with changing circumstances, whatever they are. For example, light-handed regulation, not bailing out out-moded vested interests, encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship by making firm formation and demise easier and to letting people make and retain wealth, etc, etc, so that we make best use of our greatest asset – human ingenuity and adaptability. These are true “no-regrets” policies, whatever befalls, in climate or anything else.
Economic forecasting has a terrible record. Where economic models are useful is in estimating the impact of alternative policies. All such modelling I have been involved with over the years has, however, been based on a ten-year horizon – if you make a certain policy adjustment, what will differ over a decade
compared to no change or an alternative change? In discounted cash flow terms, this is the critical period. In real-world terms, you are accepting that you can’t tell much of how the world will be in more than ten years time. One good example: in 1975, Australia’s Bureau of Industry Economics forecast what would be the ten fastest-growing industries over the next decade. In the event, none of those industries – all in microelectronics – existed in 1975.
All of the IPCC’s projected scenarios for 2100 are based on (poor) national income economic modelling. Worthless. Instead of arguing about degrees of uncertainty, acknowledge that everything is uncertain, how can we best deal with an uncertain world, of which climate change is only one, and perhaps far from the most important, element.
Faustino,
I agree with many of your points. However, not with your main point.
Do you think we can make better decisions with no analysis, no modelling, no forecasting?
Would you suggest AGL invest in new power stations with no analysis, not modelling and no forecasts? Would you suggest BHP invest in a 100 year development of Olympic Dam Mine with no analysis, no modelling, no forecasting? Should Woodside Petroleum open up new gas fields in the NW Shelf with no analysis? Should the government invest in the $50 billion (probably $75 or $100 billion) National Broadband Network with no cost benefit analysis (woops, they did, but that’s OK because the tax payer will pay (sarc alert)?
Faustino,
Further to my previous comment, this will give you an idea about what happens when the government doesn’t do cost-benefit analyses before committing to policies. We get saddled with high cost, useless policies (Like Kyoto, the ‘Pink Bats’ home insulation fiasco, and many more).
The Australian Government has committed Australia to a CO2 tax and ETS. It is legislated and started on 1 July (I know you know this, but other readers don’t). But the Government has not done the analysis properly. They have not analysed what the costs will be when the system is implemented to the standard that will ultimately be required for international trading, when ours and all other countries’ carbon pricing systems measure all 24 Kyoto GHGs from all emissions sources. That is what will ultimately be required. All they’ve done so far is to look at the costs for trading estimated emissions from the 400 largest emitters. What a joke. How long can that last?
Furthermore, the government has not properly estimated what the benefits are given that the assumptions that underpin the modelling are academic and totally impracticable. They will never be met, so the projected and costed benefits will not be achieved.
Importantly, the government has not estimated what the ultimate compliance cost will be. When asked, they obfuscated. They were asked what the compliance cost would be when the scheme is fully implemented to the standard that will eventually be required. The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency dodged the question and said:
How about that for obfuscation? They were asked about the full cost (see here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578&page=0 )
My main point is we have to do the cost-benefit analysis and do it properly. We have to be able to get the figures out and let people argue based on facts and stated uncertainties. Otherwise, we are left arguing about emotions, morals and who can find the scariest adjectives.
Peter @ 2.32 am: of course, I support analysis, modelling, forecasting and CBA, and if I were in government I would make great use of the Productivity Commission. But I don’t think we can get an accurate picture of, say 40, 100, 200 years ahead, and I don’t think that policy can be driven by such long-range assumptions. Like BHP et al, we make sufficient analysis of, say, the next 10-20 years to justify specific policies – the NBN would never have survived such analysis – but we can have little confidence in what conditions might prevail in the second half of the 21st century. What we can do is pursue those policies which give us (all of us, not just government) the most flexibility in dealing with whatever situation develops, those we had correctly foreseen and those not expected.
As an adviser, I used all of those tools to give the best advice I could in devising policies and comparing the merits of alternatives. But I would not have presumed to offer policies re 100 years hence.
Peter@ 3.05 am: fully agree. I worked at the Office of Economic Planning and Advisory Council (EPAC) from 1985-91, an ideal time to be an economist, with a government committed to good policy and many good public service, academic and business economists engaged in it. I think that ALP policy-making has gone downhill since Keating challenged Hawke, and the last five years have been an almost complete repudiation of that earlier period, an appalling government making decisions without reasonable foundation and creating serious damage to Australia. Of course, “we have to do the cost-benefit analysis and do it properly. We have to be able to get the figures out and let people argue based on facts and stated uncertainties. Otherwise, we are left arguing about emotions, morals and who can find the scariest adjectives.” I just don’t think that we can sensibly analyse as far ahead as you suggested earlier, but we can adopt policies which increase our adaptive capacity whatever befalls. So good analysis as far ahead as is feasible, supported by good growth-enhancing general policies from which we will benefit whatever happens.
Faustino,
I did not argue we can model or project accurately 50, 100 or 200 years ahead. No model of weather, climate, or economics provides accurate forecasts. But we need the information to understand the implications. If you don’t do the work, or you deny people the opportunity to see the results they want to see, they will dismiss this work and accept Stern, Garnaut and others who project for hundreds of years. Nordhaus’s model accumulates costs out to 2495. The reason they do this is because they argue it is a long term problem and we have to consider the long term consequences. So if you don’ use all the best data and best models currently available, the work will be dismissed.
BTW, I am not asking for a new model to be made from scratch. I am suggesting the results can be got from RICE( 2012), with a bit of tweaking to present them in the way I am suggesting.
Peter, I think that even with “all the best data and best models currently available,” we can’t make sensible assessments of the far future. Imagine those attempting to look 50 years ahead in, say, 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1960, and how wrong their assessments would have been. Who in 1980 foresaw the vast expansion of portable computers/smart phones and the internet, the collapse of the USSR, the massive economic growth of China and India, or CAGW, for example? Before I left work ten years ago, I encountered many attempts at futurology, strategic scenario development etc, and found all of them useless. Our best efforts will not be sufficient. Therefore, I repeat, do what is feasible and reasonable to foresee the future – which will not in my view “provide the information to understand” longer term “implications” – and support now (and always) those policies which foster innovation, entrepreneurship and adaptability, rather than those which hobble people and protect vested interests, which create Eurosclerosis, US gridlock and the current shambolic Australian policy vacuum.
If we can improve our ability to foresee the future, great. Whether or not we can, there are many sensible policies which we can adopt which do not depend on our assessment of global warming.
We both want good, well-informed policy. Now, enough, my last word on this topic. Peace!
Faustino,
I fully get your point that we cannot predict the future. You have obviously not understood my point.
Here is just one (of many) examples to demonstrate I do understand your point. I’ve made the point many times elsewhere, that the estimates of the damage costs of warming do not appear to take into consideration our demonstrated ability to adapt. When we consider that sea level rise is projected to be a few millimetres per year, even with surges, and we also consider that we are continually replacing infrastructure, then the damage costs estimates that have been done so far I expect are too high.
I’d also point out that some factors like population growth rate, GDP growth rate, and technological advances are difficult to impossible to predict. But some other parameters are dependent and can be calculated given the assumptions.
I am persuaded that a tool like I am suggesting/advocating, would be handy for educating “intelligent, interested, non-specialists”. I am persuaded we need to get information out to people. At the moment no one has much of a clue about the costs and benefits of AGW. So when reports come out like Stern and Garnaut, much of the population goes into panic mode about the end of like on Earth.
I’d like to be able to see the projected damage costs for different scenarios and different inputs that I can select and adjust. I’d like to be able tpo play with scenarios, do what if analyses, and do parametric analyses to find out which input parameters are having the most effect on the cost estimates (probability distribution of costs). Then I’d like to drill down into the ones that are having the most effect. Nordhaus (2008) says the damage parameter causes the greatest uncertainty. I suspect the damage estimates are significantly on the high side. Once we have exposure like I am suggesting we can focus on the most important and investigate how the estimating has been done.
I advocate a tool that is easy for the average person to use, like this:
http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk/pathways/1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111/primary_energy_chart
But with the option to select input parameters using slider bars or by selecting input distributions from charts like this:
Climate Sensitivity:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/box-10-2-figure-1.html
CO2 concentration projections:
http://www.spaceclimate.net/CO2.graphs.html
(the actual input would not be the concentrations as that is a parameter derived from other inputs)
Faustino, on one hand we complain that the IPCC does not make the information available so we can check it. Yet, when I advocate exposure of the basis of the cost-benefit analyses, and a tool to allow us to understand what is important, you oppose it. I suggest that is inconsistent.
I am all for getting all the information out. Once the information is readily assessable to the general public, in a way that can be readily interpreted, there can be a better informed debate – with a higher N/A* ratio.
*N/A = numbers to adjectives ratio.
I advocate less scary adjectives and more numbers – especially costs and benefits in numbers..
Judy, this is well said:
“We should always embrace the challenges critics present us because they may ultimately save us from our own biases.”
And really hits the mark. All scientists should be skeptics, and once they accept the provisional truth of something, their efforts should focus on looking for any piece of data the refutes that provisional truth in the spirit of always running from the danger of confirmation bias. In terms of a consensus, each honest scientist should look at the data themselves (assuming they can have access to it!), and either provisionally accept the truth of the hypothesis related to that data or reject it. Thus, the only honest consensus would be formed not by group-think, but hundreds of individuals examining the data and coming to the same conclusion. Once a majority have the same opinion, a consensus exists, but then you should see the biggest efforts in seeking to find data that refutes the consensus opinion. This can only help to solidify or refine that consensus view and ultimately aid in the advancement of the science.
R. Gates, “but then you should see the biggest efforts in seeking to find data that refutes the consensus opinion.” I think you should see more work just to complete the job :) With the estimate range of sensitivity not moving in 20 years despite 20 years of state of the art new data, it would be nice to see some of that data used instead everything tending to end in 1995 :)
Skeptic Gate
the only honest consensus would be formed not by group-think, but hundreds of individuals examining the data and coming to the same conclusion.
Sure. But of course the IPCC is the polar opposite of such an honest organization. What we need is for the IPCC to be scrapped and replaced by a non-political alternative with genuine science as a core value.
I have just read the compelling Final Report on the loss of the Air France Airbus 330 off the coast of Brazil in 2009 (download f-cp090601.en.pdf 26.6MB) and am struck by how suddenly and unexpectedly (like the Titanic) state-of-the-art modern technology can be humbled,
And yet there is no equivalent possible calling to account of climate science. In practice we really cannot know how justified are its theories or how reliable are its predictions.
The Airbus of climate science cannot fall out of the sky because it’s only a simulator which, while capable of modelling a whole range of scenarios, never actually leaves the ground.
The Airbus of climate science is called the earth.
Stupid boy. My point was that the Airbus of climate science was just theory that had yet to be flight tested.
It’s being tested right now.
The models say OK; let’s go fly (we’re imagining it’s a real aircraft). Happy to go along?
The Airbus fell out of the sky because of incompetent piloting (perhaps attributable to poor training). In that respect, we are at similar risk from climate science, at least of the IPCC variety. Sometimes it is better to fly by the seat of ones pants.
That is impossible if there is nothing to see outside at night. You depend on your instruments.
If you’re interested, here is briefly what happened:
0 min 0.0 sec Autopilot disconnects due to airspeed sensor icing.
F/O makes inappropriate nose-up input.
0 min 5.8 sec Aircraft stalls, probably irrecoverably.
4 min 23.8 sec Aircraft impacts ocean.
(Final Report “Only an extremely purposeful crew with a good comprehension of the situation could have carried out a manoeuvre that would have made it possible to perhaps recover control of the aeroplane”).
All the discussion / argument is about down-in-the-weeds science and physics. Why is there no discussion about information that is policy relevant?
How mind numbingly boring and irrelevant.
Or is this the purpose?
I think the term “fogging” might apply.
Is no one interested in what information is relevant for policy?
Please offer what you believe to be sensible suggestions of no regrets actions.
Rob Starkey,
Please see this for a quick, first up, partial answer to your question:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/06/05/conservatives-who-think-seriously-about-the-planet/#comment-111744
We can take your question further if useful to do so.
See my reply to your 6.16 post. We need to adopt policies which are robust with limited information, i.e. which will serve us well whatever befalls.
I can’t see any relevant policy coming from curtailing CO2 emissions if there isn’t a good scientific basis that changing CO2 emission will do anything at all.
Actions more likely to stop warming:
1. reducing thermal pollution by improving energy efficiency
2. plant more trees – turns sunlight into stored chemical potential energy
3. doing nothing (but that wouldn’t assuage our guilt for living)
blouis79,
To add to your point, there is no persuasive evidence that pricing carbon will achieve the desired results (making the climate better than it would be without carbon pricing). Kyoto was a complete dud, and the EU ETS is a failure. How much more evidence do we need that pricing carbon is a dud idea?
There is an alternative that will satisfy both the warmists and the economic rationalists. We’ll get there eventually. But first we’ve got to get to the point where most people recognise that the CO2 pricing idea is a dud. People are just not going to support policies that are economically damaging in the near term on the basis of beliefs about unrealistic future benefits. (The benefits are calculated by models. They accumulate benefits out to the year 2495 to justify their claims that benefits exceed the economic damages the carbon pricing will cause.
We see constant reminders of the danger of consensus, warning us to avoid making consensus either the goal of science or its informant.
Look at the many frankly silly, if they weren’t so dangerous, opinions taking on the dimension of idee fixe (http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/id%C3%A9e%20fixe) such as: the hockey stick has been disproven, the IPCC is about CAGW, the only issue is CAGW, oscillations explain everything, and so forth.
A consensus is just the hazard of a thing repeated so often it acquires resistance to refutation by reasoning and evidence. Science doesn’t need more resistance to reasoning and evidence, but rather less. The paradox is, when Science produces a truth, it is then inevitably adopted as consensus.
Dr. Curry: You have done an excellent job of summarizing the quagmire we find today in consensus about climate change. The need for consensus in climate science is really not rational on the basis of how science works in general. My suggestion, particularly because the audience to whom you are writing is as not as close to climate science as they might be to other branches of science, is to write this paper by comparing and contrasting how climatology is the same and is different that other scientific endeavors along the main points in the body of your paper. i.e.: consensus and the philosophy of the science, consensus and bias, the role of consensus in decision making, and unintended consequences of consensus making. Having added example from other fields of science, then it would clearer to the reader how climate research found it necessary to ascribe consensus position to their results.
The way out then is how to organize climate science to seek a balanced picture which synthesizes the body of knowledge that links both sides of the climate change debate. Fields with attributes like medicine for example would offer a situation similar to climatology. Fields like chemistry would contrast the difference. It is perhaps noteworthy that the climatology needed to address the issue of global warming is new and complex and that the models were crude simulations. This reflects the youth of the field unlike physics or chemistry with huge bodies of knowledge and mature sets of physical laws. To be fair, the IPCC scientists were trying to jump start the field of climate research in a new direction without the usual pattern of gradual evolution of ideas and theories as occurs in fields such as atomic physics.
I hope these suggestions are useful.There is no one more qualified to write this paper, especially if one considers that you have formulate a consensus of views from the almost 900 comments given by your request for suggestions to add to conclusion of the paper. I was disappointed that so many responses never seem to address your request but got bogged down in squabbling over what someone said in BLOG. Good luck!
Regimes are a fact of natural philosophy. Proving that the Denier can quote AGW space cadet scripture – here is the sanctioned IPCC global hydrological record. The thick black line is empiric.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-18.html
Note the nineties downturn – a reduction in insolation from volcanic aerosols. Hydrology is evaporation and precipitation over typically a few days. The decadal variability is evident but of course the variability is mostly ENSO and that varies a great deal over a much longer period. The red shift is – in this case – red sediment washed into a South American lake by El Niño flooding over 11,000 years.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSO11000.gif
I think it likely that the 00’s were the decade with the highest temperature for – oh – a thousand years. Why not – most change in the last thousand was perfectly natural. Indeed sometime this century there is an appreciable chance of super cold weather. What they need is a new issue. Peak soil I suggest.
‘The world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it. At the same time, population is growing exponentially – 9.3 billion by 2050, according to UN projections.
Areas of the world – particularly northern China, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Australia are already losing large tracts of arable land. Soil management is about more than heaping on chemical fertilizers. A 2008 New York Times article, Scientists focus on making better soil to help with food concerns, that examined the complex nature of simple dirt found that:
Soil does not arise quickly. In nature it starts with a layer of glacial grit, or windblown sand, or cooled lava, or alluvial silt, or some other crumbled mineral matter. A few pioneer plants put down shallow roots, and living things begin to make their homes in and on the surface, enriching it with their excrement, and enriching it further when they die and rot.
The resulting organic matter feeds a whole underground ecology that aerates the soil, fixes nutrients, and makes it more hospitable for plant life, and over time the process feeds back on itself. If the soil does not wash away or get parched by drought, it very gradually thickens. It takes tens of thousands of years to make 15 centimeters of topsoil, about 6 inches’ worth.
The UN’s Global Environment outlook, published 2007, states: “Deficiency of plant nutrients in the soil is the most significant biophysical factor limiting crop production across very large areas in the tropics.”’
How do they get it so wrong? Soil is an endlessly renewable resource. :cool: It is more a huge opportunity to sequester organic material in soils and raise agricultural productivity by 70% by the middle of the century.
This is your entire 33 years of UAH/RSS satellite temperature data:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/none
Both UAH and RSS are in essential almost perfect agreement.
This is that 33 years of precision global average temperature overlayed on 150 years of north Atlantic ocean surface temperature.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/esrl-amo/every
Note the perfect f*cking fit. Note how it happened that satellite temperature measurement happened to coincide with warming side of 60 year AMDO cycle. Note how when the AMDO went flat in recent years so did the global average temperature.
This appears to be all the proof one should need that before jumping to any hasty conclusions about global warming we need to see if the Atlantic ocscillation cool side repeats and whether the global average temperature tracks it. If it does then anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is falsified.
In my years in big bidness when a large program wound down we’d do what’s called a post mortem to see what things we did right and what we did wrong so as to improve our skill on the next iteration.
The CAGW program post mortem is sure to be fascinating and enlightening but it probably shouldn’t be done the climate science community as that’s about as smart asking the fox to guard the hen-house.
Good points Dave.
Give it to them!
The Greenhouse Effect is about average temperature and is not about increasing the temperature. To say planet earth is warming is not accurate.
The Earth with it’s atmosphere has a higher average temperature than the Moon. But the Earth is obvious not warmer than the Moon. Rather the Moon can be colder than Earth. The night side of the Moon reaches around -170 C. And during day time the Moon can reach about 120 C.
The coldest the earth ever reached is −89.2 °C, and warmest the sun warms the ground on earth is around 80C. And the ground always warmer than the air.
Earth never reaches the extreme heat or cold of the Moon.
The coldest temperature ever reached was in polar region, and the polar are a relatively small and unique area of Earth and if compared apples to apples, the Moon’s polar region can get much colder the -170 C, -240 C.
If consider just temperate and tropical regions which are 90% of surface area of the planet the temperature extremes are surface [ground] temperature of 80 C and about -60 C. And so Moon is about 40 C hotter and 110 C colder. So the Average temperature of the Earth is much warmer than the Moon, mainly because the Moon gets much cooler than Earth.
So the atmosphere and greenhouse effect on Earth actually causes the cooler high temperatures and much warmer low temperatures.
So the greenhouse effect on Earth is not at all similar our sister planet, Venus, nor is there any reason to assume adding to this greenhouse effect
will cause the surface of Earth to become hotter. Whereas it’s possible it could cause earth’s lower temperatures to rise.
Btw, the high or very temperatures on the Moon [or even Mercury] or not particular difficult problem for person’s in spacesuits or in “houses”.
This is because these temperature very easy to control in vacuum conditions on the Moon, as compare being in such extreme hot or cold environments in a earth like atmosphere. One could be in -240 C in spacesuit, be too hot because heat generated from your body- a spacesuit would cool you down even in such cold conditions. Or a “house” would need almost no heating, and shade would provide all cooling you needed- though you can’t open the window :).
Observations:
http://bit.ly/OWNvgm
1990 to 2005 => 0.24 deg C per decade warming (IPCC correct)
1996 to 2011 => 0.07 deg C per decade warming (IPCC wrong)
There cannot be any confidence in the near-term projections of the IPCC.
The models don’t work.
Has anyone noticed how PERFECT the fit is between North Atlantic surface temperature anomaly and global temperature? Here’s just the last 1000 months of Atlantic temperature with satellite record overlayed.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/rss/every/trend/offset:0.13/plot/uah/every/mean:12/offset:0.23/plot/uah/every/trend/offset:0.23/plot/esrl-amo/last:1000
Global average temperature is tracking north Atlantic temperature not the other way around. The Atlantic predictably moved along to the cooling phase of the cycle and global average temperature followed like a dog on a leash.
I wasn’t aware how perfect the fit between the two data sets. I was just playing around with numbers, which is essentially what I do both for a living and for fun, and stumbled onto this perfect fit. Was anyone else aware of it?
Yes, Vuk is a big time NA tracker though he tends to wander into solar and magnetic changes that look more like minor players than drivers. Solar impact varies with OHC so there should be no perfect solar fit unless the time constant is long enough to match internal oscillation constants which is rare with two non-linear systems.
The north Atlantic cycle is more closely related to the PDO changes though the PDO is not the best reference. That looks like Chief’s SAM with a delay for thermohaline circulation. The AMO unfortunately appears to fluctuate rather wildly.
I think if you look at it long enough you’ll see it fluctuates approximately, as in: like a bipolar procrastinator, right on time.
JCH, it does have a fairly reliable frequency but the amplitude varies, at least from what I have seen in some of the reconstructions. The AMO does have a stronger impact on surface temperature as compiled by GISTEMP, but that may just be an indication of poor SST accuracy.
Its closeness to Gistemp was discussed on a batter blog ages ago.
Better. I read batter blogs to follow my brother.
I was very aware of it and the fit is even better (over the whole time series) with raw AMO (not detrended). Actually, it would be very surprising if the fit was not that good, between global temperature indices and NA SST. That would be extraordinary.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/every/mean:12/offset:0.13/plot/gistemp/plot/esrl-amo
No global warming signal to be found in water vapor:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/new-paper-weather-and-climate-analyses-using-improved-global-water-vapor-observations-by-vonder-haar-et-al-2012/
I just want to know if A Lacis fabricated the figure for the population of flat earthers.
I don’t know what this refers to, but surely Andy would use model simulation rather than fabrication?
Here ya go Webster,
“mu*dT/dt = -A*T + dF + e(t)
where e(t) is white noise, dF is radiative forcing, mu is the heat storage per Kelvin (thermal inertia), and A is the sensitivity coefficient. The relaxation time is mu/A. The temperature change due to dF is dT is dF/A. Klar, eller hur? Thermal inertia is discussed in Chapter 7 of Principles etc., though in the next edition I think I’ll make the connection to climate sensitivity more explicit.”
That is a comment by Raypierre on rabett’s blog.
I keep mentioning that sometimes the noise is the signal. You should never ignore things that disagree with your theory.
So if there is some signal in the noise, you could consider,
mu1*dT1/dt +mu2*dT2/dt + … Mu(n)*sT(n)/dt = -A*T + dF. The different thermal inertia may not change the final system value, but they can definitely change what appears to be the final system value. So you can easily over or under estimate the final response depending on the initial condition. That is why I use different frames of reference, to reduce over confidence produced by incorrect assumptions.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2012/07/ray-bart-and-eli.html
Since you have no clue what impact an incorrect assumption of initial conditions can cause, you can blissfully strut around with “THE” solution ignoring all divergence as noise, until it bites you in the butt :)
Meaningless, unless you do something with it. That equation was simply introduced to show how limiting behavior works, You really haven’t a clue, and desperately latch on to anything in the hope that something sticks. What a clown show.
You think I haven’t done something with it? Since you are being such a joy to blog with today, Webster, consider that the (dF/dT)dt=k*F/T, the change in energy flux wioth respect to a change in temperature for some period of time is equal to the total change in energy flux for a chagne in temperature times some constant of proportionality. Since energy has a rather large spectrum, the individual changes in energy with respect to the changes in temperature associated with that change in the energy spectrum, would be equal to the total change in energy for a change in temperature for the system for that same period of time.
(dF/dT)dt= aFa/Ta +bFa/Tb + … nFn/Tn, the sum of Ta to Tn is equal to T or (dF/dT)dt=(aFa+ bFb+…nFn)/T
multiplying both sides by T yields, T(dF/dT)dt= aFa+bFb+…nFn
That is the equation Kimoto used, modified to allow for the different response each portion of the energy spectrum would have to its local thermodynamic equilibrium. Note that dt implies a time period, since each portion of the energy spectrum can have a different time response depending on local conditions and thermodynamic equilibrium,you would have to consider individual response times :) If you call that time dependence mu, then.
T(dF/dT)dt=a*mu(a)Fa + b*mu(b)Fb + …n*mu(n)Fn
Since the mu, time constant should be bleeding obvious, I had included that consideration in original use of the equation, remember the kimoto learning equation? You can break the individual fluxes into any blocks you like as long as they don’t overlap or you consider the impact of the overlap. Sensitivity is still dependent on T.
What’s the matter Webster? Cat got your tongue?
BTW, using a multilayer model with the assumption that energy is fungible but work is not,
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-eGZneJ_YkjA/UAg1pE4owbI/AAAAAAAACjE/DPoHmGS0If0/s912/oceans%2520lr%252060%2520month.png
You can look at the oceans. If the oceans are synchronized, they would transfer less energy internally meaning that energy transfer to an external sink would likely increase. Note that the non-standard way of looking at a non-linear system does have some advantages. While I can’t prove it, it appears that as the system approaches equilibrium, entropy increases. I might need a maximum entropy module for my model?
FYI: IPCC “Consensus”
“By Its Actions, the IPCC Admits Its Past Reports Were Unreliable.” Scientific. Watts Up With That?, July 16, 2012. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/16/by-its-actions-the-ipcc-admits-its-past-reports-were-unreliable/
Yes, just what are the “triumphs of climate modelling” ? It does rather look like “After 30 years work, nothing of value has been produced”.
Which is not to say the objective is flawed, just that the project is still in its infancy, and cannot yet be a basis for any significant action.
@temp
If an hypothetical Earth’s system engineer were asked to calculate a safe limit for CO2, and other GH, gas concentrations, is it really likely that we’d get an answer of: “Anything you like. Just pump it up as high as you can She’ll be right mate!”
No. But there are few if any people around who say that. Lots of straw ones do though.
I’ve argued above for policies which don’t derive from CAGW as such, but are valid of themselves: those which encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and adaptability. So I was struck by this pertinent comment in a New Statesman interview of Kenneth Branagh:
Is there a plan?
Life is about making plans from which you deviate, almost always. If you are lucky you do come up with a plan. I love that line at the end of Hamlet, “the readiness is all”. I don’t know if there is a plan, but one might hope that there is some readiness for whatever comes along.
“the readiness is all” Brilliant advice from Shakespeare.
“the readiness is all” Brilliant advice from Shakespeare.
Agreed.
So how do we increase the readiness for humans of this planet?
cf my discussion with Peter Lang. There are policies which stifle innovation, independence and self-reliance, and policies which promote them. The former seem to be in the ascendancy in many Western countries. If you find this insufficient, I’ll try to work up a more detailed post. In the meantime, here’s the intro from a 2006 paper of mine:
Developments in growth theory are gradually eliminating the distinction between the fields of economic growth and economic development. Sustained economic growth is everywhere and always a process of continual transformation. The sort of economic progress that has been enjoyed by the richest nations since the Industrial Revolution would not have been possible if people had not undergone wrenching changes. Economies that cease to transform themselves are destined to fall off the path of economic growth. The countries that most deserve the title of “developing” are not the poorest countries of the world, but the richest. (They) need to engage in the never-ending process of economic development if they are to enjoy continued prosperity.
– Peter Howitt, Conclusion, Growth and development: a Schumpeterian perspective, 2006.
Introduction: understanding economic growth
The above extract from one of the leaders in economic growth theory emphasises that growth is about transformation, about change. The main message of this paper is that policies which embrace openness, competition, change and innovation will promote growth. Policies which have the effect of restricting or slowing change by protecting or favouring particular industries or firms are likely over time to slow growth to the disadvantage of the community.
Faustino,
I agree with you. I suspect you have completely misunderstood why I am arguing to expose the costs and benefits of the mitigation policies that are advocated by the IPCC, climate scientist and CAGW alarmists.
Did you read these:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82373
Peter, I don’t think I’ve misunderstood you at all, I have argued the same for some years, including in The Australian, where we differ is in how feasible it is to make sensible assesssments for periods of 40-50 years or longer, as opposed to much shorter periods.. If I felt that we could confidently determine CBA for 50 years, I’d support that, but I think that the world is too changeable and uncertain to have confidence in such long term estimates. Including those by the IPCC. Hence my argument for policies which allow flexible responses to whatever befalls. I’ve seen some of your posts on OLO and JM, I’ll look at those links.
Peter, I had seen your JM and OLO articles, although they obviously weren’t at the forefront of my mind. Your JM article does suggest very high costs. I haven’t looked at Nordhaus’ work for some years, I think that I thought then that he overstated potential costs, if so that would strengthen your case. I agree that his assumptions are most unlikely to be met in practice. You refer to compliance costs, these include the deterrent effect on new investment and expansion of onerous regulation with uncertain costs, and a distortion of investment from what would be optimal without the anti-emissions measures.
Re your 3.48 post, I’m sorry if I’m being obtuse, I’ll re-read your posts. But I do accept that we are both strongly in the same direction, that we should not incur extensive and uncertain costs without strong evidence that the probable benefits will exceed them. And I have said many times on CE that I have seen no evidence to support a case that the net impact of anti-emissions measures would be positive.
“The countries that most deserve the title of “developing” are not the poorest countries of the world, but the richest. (They) need to engage in the never-ending process of economic development if they are to enjoy continued prosperity.
– Peter Howitt, Conclusion, Growth and development: a Schumpeterian perspective, 2006.”
Which is contrary to common view.
And I think if you include in our sphere the solar system, one can focus on such growth- very high economic growth that is recommend to “developing nations”, there no reason that only China can have +9 % economic growth.
US would save the world if it would have a sustained and real, economic growth of 9% [makes no sense to those who believe in zero sum gain].
I don’t recommend getting to such growth next year, but within a decade or two it could done. But near term at least get back up to 3% and then on to 6% economic growth.
The term “developing” was coined by those (mainly in the “First World”) who thought that terms such as “Third World” or “under-developed” countries were demeaning to those countries, it does not mean that all of the countries to which the term is currently applied are in fact developing.
While rates of per capita income growth are greater in some “developing” countries than in most “industrialised’ countries, I think that, at least up to 2007 and perhaps since then, actual pcig was greater in the latter. But that’s a top-of-the-head assessment. There’s certainly plenty of development in Australia, and not just in resource industries, with innovation in retail, financial services, construction techniques, medicine etc; generally in spite of government rather than because of it.
Of course there is also innovation in some poor African countries, e.g. through use of low-cost mobile phones to obtain market data and transfer funds, opening up new opportunities in remote areas which had very poor communications. But the mobile phones were first developed for rich-country markets.
No Faustino. That is not where we differ at all. That is where you, wrongly, perceive we differ. We do not differ on that. Perhaps, if you reread my comments I’ve made in answer to your repeated restatement of this misunderstanding, you’ll understand what I am saying.
Faustino,
I would formulate that idea saying that economic growth may not be essential but continuing change is. The mechanisms that drive the growth when there is potential for growth drive also the change that’s needed also when external factors prevent growth. Perhaps the change driven by the same mechanisms is even more important, when growth cannot be achieved.
The state of economic development that I have in mind is such where we lose continually prosperity for various reasons like running out of resources or negative changes in environment – or for an individual nation through loss of competitive advantages to other countries as the wealthy countries have lost to China and other growing economies. These negative changes must be compensated by change and growth in other sectors if we wish to prosper and maintain a high level of well-being. The total size of economy doesn’t necessarily need to grow, but many sectors must do that.
Having little or no overall growth in economy of present high-income countries (at least on per capita basis) leads to difficulties but not necessarily to anything really serious. It does require new solutions in managing the economies.
Pekka Pirila,
While not steering away from the main point you want to make, I’d like to make a point about this bit:
If you are referring to mineral resources, that won’t happen. We will not run out of mineral resources. (I do not include fossil fuels as mineral resources). We will not run out of energy, because we have effectively unlimited nuclear fuel. We will not run out of water because we have unlimited energy to power desalination. So raising this is an unhelpful scare issue, IMO.
The wealthy countries did not ‘lose’ their competitive advantage to China and other growing economies. Their bad policies forced their industries to move to China and other growing countries. The bad policies I am talking about are excessive ‘nanny state’, excessive regulation, excessive taxation, excessive bureaucracy and excessive trying to dictate everything their businesses cannnot do. Carbon pricing is the latest of a long list of dumb policies forced on governments by irrational voters overly influenced by the anti-development groups like Greenpeace, etc.
…bad policies [like] excessive ‘nanny state’, excessive regulation, excessive taxation, excessive bureaucracy and excessive trying to dictate everything their businesses cannot do. Carbon pricing is the latest of a long list of dumb policies forced on governments by irrational voters overly influenced by the anti-development groups like Greenpeace, etc.
And the IPCC. All of whom receive much government money.
Government money producing excuses for more government. That’s the overall pattern here.
Peter,
Some of the major problems are caused by bad policies in the sense that minimal policies would have been essentially better. It’s much more common that external factors have changes the stage and the optimal policies to react to the changes have not been found or chosen.
Very many developments have changed the relative positions of countries. The technical basis of globalization is irreversible. Extremely fast communication is one major factor, developments in transportation and logistics is another. They have really changed the competitive status of rich countries. They cannot employ low-cost workforce in their own countries to compete in production where that remains important.
To maintain the high level of well-being of wealthy countries requires a lot of change, not stopping the change by freezing some essential development. Isolationism is not an alternative, but maintaining the large differences in economic prosperity becomes all the time more difficult when contacts between peoples get closer. The best hope is that the gap gets narrower from one side only, but is that a realistic hope?
Pekka,
Lots of good points. However, I think there is a tendency to ignore or avid admitting to the many things we do to shoot ourselves in the foot. I can give many examples of how the EU, UK, USA and Australia have passed laws that make us less competitive. I’ll start with Australia:
1. Carbon tax and ETS
2. Mining Tax
3. Industrial Relations laws returned to the 1980s, so unions are now back in control of running the country, holding businesses to ransom, industrial disputation taking off like a hockey stick
4. Mandatory renewable energy targets, renewable energy certificates, feed in tariffs (more than ten times the wholesale cost of electricity), direct subsidies for renewable energy plants and transmission to remote renewable plants
5. 16,000 new regulation imposed on business and society by this government in the past 4 ½ years and only 78 removed.
You get the picture.
This is not helping us maintain our high level of well being. It is doing the opposite.
We have to compete in our areas of natural advantage. We need to be flexible
Peter,
I’m not going to argue on any particular point. I only note that the development of a society is genuinely an issue of multiple targets and multiple constraints. Taking some of the others into account will be detrimental in short run for a chosen one, but taking the others into account may be crucially important in the long run even for that single target.
Going back in history it’s easy to find violent demonstrations of that fact in revolutions wars mass movements of population as well as many less violent and dramatic examples.
Finding good compromises and getting them accepted is the real virtue in politics (perhaps adding that maintaining the influence to make the changes long lasting).
Yes, Pekka, I’ve made the point that whatever the circumstances, we’ll get better outcomes with policies which foster our capacity to innovate and adapt. Most of the EU adopted the euro for political reasons, against economists’ advice, and the loss of flexibility has cost them dearly (along with many other rigid policies, e.g. in industrial relations where the focus is often on protecting existing jobs at the expense of young people who can’t find work and of growth).
Faustino,
Yep. We are on the same wave length (but perhaps place different emphasis on how best to progress).
But what exactly would be privatised and owned here? Certificates carrying the right to create X amount of Co2? To make sense this would of course imply knowledge of how much total Co2 is a safe level, which at this stage climate science is very obviously unable to provide. A carbon tax suffers from the same problem – how do you set a sensible level while we remain clueless as to how much Co2 is reasonable?
For democracy to work requires good information. And that’s precisely what we don’t have right now; a manufactured consensus just will not suffice. Letting people vote despite their ignorance may have many other benefits, but solving the Co2 issue isn’t one of them.
Sullivan | July 19, 2012 at 3:31 am |
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=carbon+cycle+privatization
What would be owned, already rightly is owned, by every citizen per capita, never yielded or given up by any living breathing person who has an ounce of lung, the right to the air as a shared resource. This is no less than the case of the village well we find louts drunkenly pissing in and must now post guards on, with hefty fines to the polluted polluters.
How to best go about posting a fee on the use of the Carbon Cycle as a resource to dispose of CO2E? Post a fee on the emission of CO2E. British Columbia’s Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=British+Columbia+Revenue+Neutral+Carbon+Tax) has an admirable mechanism for simply and seamlessly collecting such fees at marginal cost within the sales tax stream (which coincidentally through the magic of economies of scale and the Double Dividend effect — http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Double+Dividend — more than pays for itself in benefit to the taxpayer, too); that system applies the fees collected to reduce income tax and to make disbursements to individuals.
Myself, I’d prefer if the dividend were put into payrolls through reversal of payroll taxes, as the US Citizen’s Climate Lobby (http://citizensclimatelobby.org/node/398) proposes (though I’m not endorsing their specific measure, that’d be for people to decide for themselves).
For democracy to work requires the best available information people choose to use, which is hardly the same as good information. See, as issues of climate amply illustrate, ignorance can be anyone’s democratic right too.
Bart R
1. Nationalisation is ownership and control by the state. You propose state control of carbon use. Therefore you propose nationalisation of carbon..
In no sense will ownership of carbon now in the commons, become owned by citizens who would then be able to use or trade these rights. Not that such a nationalization is necessarily a bad idea, mind. Just stop pretending it isn’t nationalisation.
2. Your proposal takes away from the state the power to fix the price of carbon use?
Firstly it obviously doesn’t remove the political power. It says the tax should be set to the revenue-generating max. Supposedly to give the returns to citizens, but how long before it becomes another vital pillar of the increasingly statist society. Hence its likely popularity with totalitarian-leaning voters, in the longer term.
4. Higher consumers of carbon will effectively subsidise lower users of carbon.
Overwhelmingly obvious (even though there was a bad typo in my original). In this it resembles other taxes on use of natural resources, eg minerals or land. And Yes, even though there is no true privatisation of carbon, this nationalisation will in theory simulate each citizen renting out his carbon rights.
5. The proposal involves or requires zero understanding of the impact of Co2 on the climate, and hence also its own impact.
Yes true. It is really not a climate policy at all; It’s a wealth-transfer policy. (So why is it being touted on a climate blog?, one wonders. One speculates there will possibly be some reduction in carbon use).
Bart
You spoke of “privatising” carbon, but propose effectively nationalising it, ie making people pay the state for using it, and the state will decide how much. Whatever, it is still some kind of response. And yes, being revenue-neutral*, higher consumers of consumers of carbon will subsidise lower users.
But the bigger problem I outlined, you simply ignore – ie what level to set the tax/fee at, given that we really have no idea what the impact of rising Co2 is. Any figure will be purely arbitrary, meaning we have no idea whether the benefits will outweigh the costs.
—
* And realistically, the chances of it remaining revenue-neutral for very long must be very close to zero. Soon it will be helping to funding big-government programs, the very opposite of privatisation, all the while riding on the back of the noble cause of saving the planet.
Sullivan | July 19, 2012 at 4:12 pm |
Your analysis fails on several points.
1. Nationalization _might_ be something like the proposal I put forward, except that there is nothing more “nationalized” than the Commons, which is how the Carbon Cycle is now treated. Relatively speaking, any move that recognizes the property rights in the Carbon Cycle of individuals more than now is therefore a privatization.
2. My proposal explicitly takes away from the state the power to fix the price of the Carbon Cycle — distinct from the way British Columbia does it — by applying the same Law of Supply and Demand as Market Capitalism relies on throughout. That is, the price of CO2E should be the price at which maximum returns to owners — each citizen, per capita — is reached. So if the fee is raised another penny, so much less CO2E will be used that the revenues drop.
3. “Some response” might be fine for some; I prefer a Capitalist response, one that will work, one that doesn’t kowtow to the special interests of some on the Left or in the corporate sector or tax-and-spend ‘conservatives’.
4. “..higher consumers of consumers of carbon will subsidise lower users.” You have that so backwards as to not even remotely resemble sense. Currently, lower intensity users of the Carbon Cycle subsidize higher intensity users by not getting paid their due dividend. Under Carbon Cycle privatization, higher intensity consumers of the Carbon Cycle will compensate all owners. See, that’s the normal usage of those terms, not the spin you put on them.
5. By appealing to the genius of the Market, a well-known effect of Capitalism, we do not need any single individual player to omnisciently know the effect of CO2E on the climate. We only need the participants in the Market to have a fair opportunity to express the value of the Carbon Cycle to them by the democracy of the Law of Supply and Demand. No expert, no panel, no committee, no politburo, no one but each of us would fix the price, and that price would without question be the right one. Who is anyone to gainsay everyone?
*6. How long is “very long” in your opinion? British Columbia’s Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax has remained revenue neutral for five years now; it has a unique mechanism that requires the Minister of Finance to stand up every year in the Legislative Assembly and account for every penny or lose fifteen percent of their salary. Sure, this _could_ be repealed by a vote of the legislature.. but that repeal itself is unlikely to stand, as British Columbia also has a tried and true mechanism by petition and referendum to reject changes. It’s done this in the past year on a different tax. And the Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax? It’s only grown in popularity since it came in.
In sum, you’re just wrong six ways from Sunday.
Bart,
This is a point on which I have argued with you and on which I continue to disagree fully and fundamentally with you. Your statement
is without basis. You have not made such a proposal and you will never make such a proposal because that’s fundamentally impossible.
We release CO2 to the atmosphere and there’s no natural market that would put a price on the carbon cycle. A price can be put on that only through a public regulation and that regulation must define the formula based on which the amount to be paid or received is calculated or will get determined less directly. That formula will always contain a parameter that determines directly or indirectly the price level. Carbon tax is an example of the direct determination, the European ETS an example of the indirect determination as are all other cap and trade type schemes.
It seems clear that what you are proposing is a variation of the cap and trade scheme, where the price level depends totally on the cap which is set by government or another similar body. The balance of supply and demand determines the price when the supply and the demand are well defined, but for carbon cycle that’s not true. The atmosphere and the Earth system will take all CO2 released. It’s not a trading partner. The natural maximum economic return is on short term obtained by zero price for such resources. For many resources the present legal system determines the owner who has the interest of charging a price, for carbon cycle we miss that, it’s a truly Global Commons. A real Common cannot be genuinely privatized. The government can create a proxy market for that but that requires that the government makes also decisions that ultimately determines the price.
Pekka
On the likelihood of a varying, take-maximising carbon tax :
it takes someone else than me – or Bart – to consider a government that’s ready to act like that.
Yes, there we agree. We’re talking flying pigs here. Even more so on keeping it revenue-neutral.
On short term a new tax would not really be revenue neutral
Because we first need to perfect the simpler task of mutating some flying pigs, I take you to mean.
but in the long term the total level of taxation is determined by other economic and political factors than the set of taxes that are in force. Therefore the outcome would be essentially revenue neutral.
?? Regardless of all other considerations, if a carbon tax is used for purposes other than paying out all its revenues (minus genuine admin costs) equally to all citizens, it is no longer revenue-neutral. (Which we agree is what will doubtless happen).
By revenue neutral I understand something that brings the same revenue for the government, not something that’s distributively neutral and thus of no consequences for everyone.
In short term each form of tax affects the economy in a different way. For the same government revenue some forms lead to stronger economy on short term and some on longer term. Optimal on short term is probably not optimal on longer term. One of the major political controversies has always concerned the question of what is optimal on longer term – and that applies both to the overall level of taxes and to their structure.
Distortive taxes are bad for the economy, but agreeing on what’s distortive is often impossible.
By revenue neutral I understand something that brings the same revenue for the government
No Pekka, that is not how the term is generally used, and certainly not in Bart’s proposal. It should bring zero net revenue for government itself, merely redistribute money from high carbon users to low carbon users.
Now I don’t understand at all, what you mean as I write the same revenue for the government and you refer to bring zero net revenue for the government.
Where do you see the difference that I don’t see?
Pekka
With say petrol tax, the government can spend the money on its own activities and programs, eg defence, schools, roads. With a revenue-neutral tax, it doesn’t, it just passes the money back to some citizens.
And in this case (a tax on natural resources), it does so in a way that has the same effect as you would have if the natural resource (carbon in this case) was owned by citizens who charged for its use. And if the idea is to give each citizen an equal share in the natural resource, then each citizen/shareholder would get an equal payout.
carbon cycle … it’s a truly Global Commons … The government can create a proxy market for that but that requires that the government makes also decisions that ultimately determines the price.
No, if the tax is set up to vary so as to maximise its take, then Bart is right on this particular point.
But, as already noted,
– this is completely unrelated to any understanding of climate or the tax’s impact thereon
– the likelihood of the tax remaining revenue-neutral, and hence remaining being a reasonable proxy market in carbon rights, is surely close to zero.
Perhaps so but it takes someone else than me – or Bart – to consider a government that’s ready to act like that.
On the revenue neutrality my view is almost exact opposite of yours.
On short term a new tax would not really be revenue neutral, but in the long term the total level of taxation is determined by other economic and political factors than the set of taxes that are in force. Therefore the outcome would be essentially revenue neutral.
Sullivan and Pekka
“Revenue neutrality” is one aspect.
But even more important is “impact neutrality”:
The “carbon tax”, no matter how it is structured, cannot be shown to have any significant impact on overall atmospheric CO2 levels in year 2100, and hence will have no perceptible impact on global average temperature.
IOW it is a waste of effort.
Max
Max
Yes … I already mentioned above that its effect on AGW is really a big question mark. It’s really about (proxy) ownership of the commons, and neither uses nor provides any useful climate or even environmental knowledge.
Sullivan,
Don’t forget the compliance cost. The compliance cost will be huge if the mechanism is to meet the modellers’ assumptions, and if the mechanism does not meet the assumptions, it will not work.
“The ultimate compliance cost for the ETS
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
The assumptions are listed here:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
Therefore, it is impossible for the carbon pricing system to be revenue neutral.
Peter L
Compliance, and the costs thereof. I understand your point to be, (a) setting the (varying) tax level so as to maximise its take, and (b) paying these ‘rents’ to each citizen.
In theory…
(b) could be done by knocking the amount off each person’s income tax.
(a) could be done by
1. Start with some low number, say 0.5%
2. After a year, increase it a small amount , say to 1%
3. In subsequent years, observe the change in total take between the previous two years, and adjust the tax rate in the appropriate direction.
So if the tax take went down by x%, reduce the tax rate by that amount. And vice-versa.
Sullivan,
No. You’ve missed the point about the compliance cost. See the links:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
I’ve displayed some frustration that the long discussion with Pekka Pirila on a previous thread seems to be starting all over again. His comments towards the end of that discussion led me to believe that although not admitting he was wrong, he did understand that fuel taxes cannot work as a substitute for emissions pricing as a means to significantly reduce global emissions.
Instead of displaying my frustration that we have to keep going through the same points about the fuel taxes as an alternative to emissions pricing, I should display pleasure that at least people who want mitigation are in effect acknowledging that CO2 taxes and ETS are impracticable and cannot work. That is real progress. Emissions pricing by either Carbon Tax or ETS (Cap and Trade) are the two mechanisms that are seriously considered. They have been the big white hope now that everyone realises that Kyoto Protocol was a complete dud.
The fact that Pekka Pirilla, Sullivann Bart R and others are arguing for alternative ways to try to price emissions is a clear indication that there is growing awareness that the mechanisms the economists have been advocating – Tax on CO2-eq emissions or ETS – cannot work in practice
For who believe that mitigation is essential I should state that there is an economically rational way to achieve it. Therefore, it can get the support of conservatives and the support of those rational and sensible people who do not want to risk the economic damage they believe an ETS and CO2 tax will probably cause. We can get to that later. I believe the System Engineers will approve.
But we need to work through these tax ideas first until we al understand why they cannot be a solution in the real world. (the failure of Kyoto Protocol and the EU ETS, and the collapse of the Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban and Rio+20 international conferences should provide sufficient evidence that these mechanisms cannot work in the real world to convince most people).
Peter
If the mechanism is one to maximise the tax’s revenues, of what relevance are all these compliance issues? You simply have something like existing petrol taxes, surely.
No. Fuel taxes are not emissions taxes. There are many reasons why fuel taxes cannot be used for emissions pricing. Fuel taxes are not being seriously considered as an option for carbon pricing. The two options seriously considered are emissions taxes or emissions trading schemes (Cap and Trade).
Emissions pricing must be global
In short, for emissions pricing to work, it must be global. The mechanism must be implemented in unison and maintained in unison. It must cover all countries and all greenhouses gasses (there are 24 nominated greenhouse gases covered under the UNFCCC).
These are just some of the assumptions that underpin the modelling of the carbon price. While they are theoretical and impossible to achieve in practice, they are essential for the scheme to meet the assumptions and achieve the aims. Nordhaus (2008) has estimated the cost of partial compliance. If only 50% of emissions are included, the cost penalty to the participants is estimated to be 250%. Clearly, participating countries are not going to participate if all countries are not included. If only some emissions sources are included and not others, we have the same problem. The mechanism is not sustainable in practice.
Fuel taxes are not emissions taxes
Here is an edited versions of one of my responses to Pekka Pirila on a previous thread http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/10/between-tribalism-and-trust/#comment-218778
:
1. [Pekka Pirila said]: “Not expecting that the very high taxes on motor fuels would be lowered it would apply mainly to coal and gas”. You are proposing no change to the taxes on petroleum products, but you are proposing raising the tax on coal and gas to the same level per unit of C. So you propose the policy should make no (intended) changes to the amount of oil used or to vehicle usage. However, you propose to greatly increase the cost of coal and gas. This will make these more costly relative to oil, so this will cause a move in consumption away from coal and gas towards more oil consumption. Imagine what this means: we’ll be reverting back a few decades and replacing our gas heaters with oil heaters. We’ll be replacing some gas and coal electricity generation with oil for electricity generation (as Japan is doing now to replace the nuclear plants that have been shut down). The world will ramp up oil consumption and reduce coal and gas consumption. This, surely, is the opposite of the intended consequence. That’s one reason why fuel taxes won’t work as emissions taxes.
2. Let’s focus on coal. If we wanted to put a tax on the fuel, instead of the emissions, we’d have to be able to measure the fuel use accurately. That means we must measure the fuel being fed in to each boiler at a close time interval, such as the same as the electricity output is measured and reported. There are two alternative methods: 1) calculate the fuel used from the power output and known heat rate of the plant (varies with output, age, plant efficiency, time since last major maintenance, and importantly whether it is ramping up or down at the time). This is how EU countries calculate CO2 emissions. It is not accurate enough to avoid the opportunity for significant fraud. It will not survive international arguments over who is cheating; 2) You measure the mass and C content of the fuel entering the boiler. But how do you measure the mass of coal entering the boilers? This is not a trivial question. Many power plants have no measure of coal mass entering the boiler. Some weigh the coal being transferred by train, truck or conveyor to stockpiles, but not entering the boiler. So using this method, we have little idea about the quantity of coal being burnt at any time and for any given output of the plant or the efficiency losses when the plant is cycling up and down to follow load changes. The uncertainties amount to millions of dollars available for fraud and cheating per plant per year. You can envisage what this will lead to when more and more money is involved, companies are getting into financial difficulties for whatever reason, banks refuse to extend credit, and more and more countries have to participate: “My country / my business wouldn’t cheat but I am damned sure your country and all my competitors are cheating. My shareholders are being ripped off by other cheats. I am being held to account by my shareholders. I have the evidence and I am going to litigate. Also, I am going to make enough fuss (along with my pals Greenpeace, WWF and FoE) until my country takes your country to the international World Trade Organisation, because I know your country is cheating.”
3. For your proposal to work, the whole world must act in unison and have the same amount of tax applied to the same fuels. If not there will be carbon leakage from one country to another. For example, if Finland, or EU, or Australia applies a higher level of tax than say China and India then industries will move to China and India. EU and USA have been driving their manufacturing capability to transfer to Asian countries by applying excessive regulation on business for decades. The C price if applied differentially between countries will do that. And we need to recognise this will go on for decades, perhaps all of this century. During this century all of Africa will emerge from poverty and become developed. So, the industrialisation we see going on now in China and India and most of Asia – and previously in Germany, Japan and Korea – will continue through all the poorest countries. That is what differential application of the fuel tax or C tax will do. It is why one of the main assumptions in the C price modelling is that everyone has to be in together and it has to apply across all GHG emissions.
4. Think about how this is going to be applied in Eretria, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia.
Compliance cost
It should be clear from the above that, for the mechanism to work, emissions will have to be measured. The estimates of emissions that are currently being done in the EU and Australia will not be acceptable eventually. So, eventually the whole world will need systems to measure emissions to the level or precision and accuracy that will be required for trade or taxing a commodity. The US EPA requires measurement of emissions from large emitters. Those requirements would eventually be extended to all emissions of all the twenty-four Kyoto gasses, from all sources, in all countries. The compliance cost would be enormous. This is unproductive money. It cannot be distributed or used for the benefit of society. It would be consumed in measurement, monitoring, reporting, ongoing system maintenance and upgrades, bureaucracy and court cases.
References:
Nordhaus (2008) http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf
The ultimate compliance cost of the ETS:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
The assumptions:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82373
Peter,
Fuel taxes have been applied on coal for years at significant level in several countries including Finland and Sweden. There have not been difficulties of the type you claim in that. It’s a well established fact that the solution is possible, practical and that it does not induce high costs of implementation. You theorize in vain against clear facts.
Fuel taxes are a perfectly practical alternative for emission taxes. They are not identical, but they are close enough and they avoid largely the implementation problems of emission taxes.
Pekka Pirila,
That is another of your arm waving, unsubstantiated statements. It ignores all the points I’ve made in this and previous comments in reply to you. Some of them are here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/10/between-tribalism-and-trust/#comment-217904
to about here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/10/between-tribalism-and-trust/#comment-218778
Show some substantiation to support your statements.
1. Who says fuel taxes can be applied globally and uniformly?
2. Who is seriously arguing for fuel taxes instead of emissions pricing?
3. How can you apply fuel taxes to coal and gas an not increase the taxes on oil (as you suggested) without forcing a move of consumption from coal and gas to oil?
Your comment does not deal with any of the points I made (other than to make arm-waving, irrelevant statements such as: Finland and Sweden have taxes on coal; as I recall Finland also has a tax on nuclear; German has a tax on nuclear and uses it to subsidise brown coal).
Your comment is nonsense.
Peter,
I’m only saying that some of your arguments are not valid. More specifically
– fuel tax can be close enough to carbon tax and it can be applied to coal
– the implementation costs of fuel tax are small and the implementation is technically easy.
That’s all.
Pekka Pirilla,
Instead of making all your unsubstantiated assertions and hand waving statements – trying to avoid direct questions by arguments such as “oh, its all very complicated” and similar, how about giving some direct, quantitative answers:
1. What rate of tax will you apply to each fuel?
2. Will they be the same for all users of each fuel
3. Will they taxes be the same in all countries?
4. Will they be implemented at the same time?
5. If not, how will you prevent distortions?
6. If you don’t intend to avoid distortions, how do you intend to resolve conflicts?
7. How will you tax the non fuel emissions?
I suggest you need to do this, because I know there are enormous holes in your argument but you clearly don’t. If you won’t have a go at answering these questions, you wont; be able to recognise how ridiculous it is.
Peter,
For this case you have no argument. Your claims are unsubstantiated while I report on factual experience. You can certainly find material in English on these taxes, if you wish to know what’s about.
There are other issues on which you may well have good arguments. I’m by no means saying that carbon content based fuel taxes are a perfect solution, far from that. They are, however, technically easy to adopt and have low implementation costs. That’s all.
I do believe that they are superior to cap and trade type solutions, because of easier implementation, because they can be made more predictable, and because it’s easier to avoid major mistakes in deciding on the price than in choosing the cap.
There are other problems but I don’t consider them any worse than corresponding problems with cap and trade. Very many economists agree that taxes are a better solution than cap and trade, I’m far from alone with this opinion.
Nothing in the above tells what would be the right level for the carbon tax. I have argued that making it so high that it is guaranteed to have a major effect on emissions has a high likelihood to err so much on the high side that the net effect may turn out to be negative. Therefore I would start with a lower one in spite of it’s limited value in reducing emissions.
To make the tax predictable there should be clear rules on how it can be changed. Those rules should specify a maximum rate for the change and criteria to be used in deciding whether a change is warranted.
Peter,
Thank you for taking time to offer such analysis.
They seem more appreciative of our predicament
Than any editorials about CAGW alarmists.
More about this, less about CAGW alarmists.
Pretty please with some sugar on it.
Pekka Pirilla,
No. You are talking nonsense.
I’ve made my argument and substantiated them repeatedly (for example, see links cited within these):
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82373
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
On the other hand you make loose woolly statements and irrelevant comments that do not address the issue. You do not answer my specific questions.
Why won’t you answer the specific question I asked you? If you tried, it would be plain to you why no one is seriously considering fuel taxes as a means to cut global emissions – not USA, China, India, Indonesia, EU, IK, Canada, Australia.
Fuel taxes are not only “far from perfect” that cannot work as a global mechanism to cut emissions. They cannot even work in one country for the very obvious reasons I’ve explained many times previously such as the massive distortion on raising the price of coal and gas but not raising the price of oil (which you previously stated would not propose to raise the taxes on). Admit it; you haven’t a clue what you are talking about.
So what? If they cannot do the job of a global emissions pricing scheme because the distortions they cause would have very bad effects.
Pekka, at least we agree that cap and trade type solutions cannot work. You may believe fuel taxes will work as a substitute to pricing emissions but no countries are seriously suggesting it as solution for cutting global emissions. Why do you think that is?
Why do you say it is easier to avoid making major mistakes? Where is your substantiation for that comment? How will you set the prices for all fuels, for all users, for all countries and move the price up uniformly everywhere? How about answering these questions so we can see just how far you have thought this through:
1. What rate of tax will you apply to each fuel?
2. Will they be the same for all users of each fuel
3. Will they taxes be the same in all countries?
4. Will they be implemented at the same time?
5. If not, how will you prevent distortions?
6. If you don’t intend to avoid distortions, how do you intend to resolve conflicts?
7. How will you tax the non fuel emissions?
That is true. But th8is comment looks like you are being devious. Previously you advocated fuel taxes instead of emissions taxes or cap and trade. You recognised that there are major issues with both cap and trade and emissions taxes. So you proposed fuel taxes. Then it became apparent you know nest to nothing about the subject.
While it is true the “many economists argue that taxes are a better solution than cap and trade, they are not the majority. But, importantly, with respect to our argument, they are not advocating fuel taxes (which is what you are arguing for). They are advocating taxes on emissions. Now our argument has gone full circle and we are back to where we started. That is, for emissions monitoring we would eventually need emissions measurement, like the US legislation requires. But emissions measurement would eventually have to be applied to all emitters, all sources, in all countries, for all twenty-four Kyoto gasses. These two links explain the US requirements for measuring emissions:
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/business/ecmps/docs/ECMPSEMRI2009Q2.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkt/emissions/docs/plain_english_guide_par75_final_rule.pdf
Why do you think the USA has legislated emissions measurement if it is not necessary?
This is all hand-waving nonsense. You need to say what you mean by high and low. A low tax will have no effect. A high tax in a country causes massive distortions. If not unified across the worked it causes massive trade distortions. Your idea is so silly it is really frustrating.
You need to substantiate these arguments. What do you mean by high and low? Put a figure on the tax for each fuel. Answer the seven questions I posted above (and in my previous comment but you avoided answering them).
More woolly, hand-waving statements. What on Earth do these statements mean? Be specific. Address my seven questions.
Sorry for duplicate post (I posted this in the wrong place)
I’ve displayed some frustration that the long discussion with Pekka Pirila on a previous thread seems to be starting all over again. His comments towards the end of that discussion led me to believe that although not admitting he was wrong, he did understand that fuel taxes cannot work as a substitute for emissions pricing as a means to significantly reduce global emissions.
Instead of displaying my frustration that we have to keep going through the same points about the fuel taxes as an alternative to emissions pricing, I should display pleasure that at least people who want mitigation are in effect acknowledging that CO2 taxes and ETS are impracticable and cannot work. That is real progress. Emissions pricing by either Carbon Tax or ETS (Cap and Trade) are the two mechanisms that are seriously considered. They have been the big white hope now that everyone realises that Kyoto Protocol was a complete dud.
The fact that Pekka Pirilla, Sullivan, Bart R and others are arguing for alternative ways to try to price emissions is a clear indication that there is growing awareness that the mechanisms the economists have been advocating – Tax on CO2-eq emissions or ETS – cannot work in practice
For who believe that mitigation is essential I should state that there is an economically rational way to achieve it. Therefore, it can get the support of conservatives and the support of those rational and sensible people who do not want to risk the economic damage they believe an ETS and CO2 tax will probably cause. We can get to that later. I believe the System Engineers will approve.
But we need to work through these tax ideas first until we al understand why they cannot be a solution in the real world. (the failure of Kyoto Protocol and the EU ETS, and the collapse of the Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban and Rio+20 international conferences should provide sufficient evidence that these mechanisms cannot work in the real world to convince most people).
For those who prefer SkepticalScience as a source, see:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82373
and two comments starting here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#80580
Or better written here:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
Wow.
I little imagined the depth of analyses and interest in the topic. Good discussion, folks.
Some random points, picked out:
1. “Some form of Cap & Trade” is too much of a generalization. Plastic surgery to correct a cleft palate that is causing its disfigured young victim to have repeated episodes of gagging and choking that threaten the subject’s life is very different from cosmetic treatment with Botox in many ways. If you’re saying “it’s some form of cap & trade,” you’ve applied too little work to the particulars to grasp important distinctions in the issue. Cap & Trade is meant to ensure a result, but requires that result be determined beforehand and thus cannot be delivered by Capitalism. It’s inevitably a form of command & control regulation to apply Cap & Trade; likewise, it’s inevitably a system that is susceptible to being gamed in ways the Market is not, due fraud and abuse.
2. “It isn’t possible,” too is simply armwaving. Of course privatization in general and this privatization in particular is possible. This is why I cite specific cases of privatizations that put Carbon Cycle privatization in perspective, from the mobile communications industry and television through the British Columbia Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax Act. Possible. Not hazardous. Provident. Sustainable. Real. Undeniable.
3. “There’s no way to use Supply & Demand,” is too strong a claim, by far. It’s possible the specific mechanism I’ve indicated — a mechanism to determine maximum returns to owners that is identical to how businesses decide how much product to manufacture and sell in a market — might not be straightforward and without issue in the case of the Carbon Cycle. However, the Law of Supply & Demand is extremely robust, tried and true. It violates the sensibilities of Capitalism to immediately assume it would fail in any one special case without even being tried, and without in-depth competent Economic analyses of factors that might foil it.
4. “Carbon Price would have no connection to the ultimate impact.” Well, that would be for the Market to decide, not us. I find your lack of faith in the power of the Market distressing, to paraphrase Darth Vader. And yet, more Europeans claim to be Jedi than claim to be Capitalists.
5. The role of government. Well, that’s all government would have: a role. Specifically, it’s right role, within the limits of what government is for, no more, and unlike today’s abdicate state of government, no less than is minimally acceptable. Would government set up the fee & dividend system? Unless they privatize that function, sure, why not? Would governments collect and distribute the fees? Where they already have national systems to collect retail amounts and disburse amounts to income-earners, as it is merely a marginal add-on to existing systems and one with a double-dividend of reducing tax churn by more than the cost of implementation, sure, why not? Would it set up the mechanism to determine maximum return to owners within the clear and simple definitions of the Law of Supply & Demand? Sure, but that’s a _role_, that’s _involvement_.. it’s _NOT_ command, and it isn’t control, which rest solely with the Market and the democractic decisions of independent buyers and sellers.
Please carry on, I’m finding much of what you say challenging and interesting.
This is good although I dare say a bit idealistic. This is not just any scientific field, it is one of those where convictions run hot and the problems are hard. To have set up the IPCC with a bias was a fatal flaw. To have set it up to find a consensus was another. It makes it look like a show trial in a corrupt system. Then the reluctance to open the books to fair and reasonable and unbiased auditors seems to confirm that. The attempts to silence the opposition don’t help either. The only way forward is to publicly support and fund a major audit and reestablish credibility.
Here are some quotes from Luboš Motl’s blog about science which show a success, unlike the IPCC result.
http://motls.blogspot.ca/2012/07/confirmation-of-sensible-theories-is.html
So there you have it, the measure of the quality of the science is not consensus, it is certainty. When uncertainty decreases, that is when we start trusting. Before then, there is just confusion.
There has been lots of ‘consensus’ about the Higgs boson for years, but consensus was never regarded as a proof.
Great thread. It’s just passed 1000 comments.
Scientific consensus – by equivocation. See
Six Easy Steps for Saving the Coral Reefs for our Grandchildren
We live in a society ran by bullying. Those cute CBS ads saying “Be nice” are just for show. With social networking and smart phones, everyone is in contact with everyone else 24/7. The biggest advantage of this is the ability to bully people into behaving as you want them to. Consensus in fashion, consensus in sexual orientation validity, consensus in government supporting everyone is just a social media page away. If you can incorporate guilt (“you don’t care about the planet”), it helps. People listen to the fashion police, the restaurant police, the network police, etc. If you don’t follow fashion, you’re out. If you don’t support the right political causes, you’re out for being selfish and greedy. It’s to the point no one dare stand up to the bullies. Which brings us to “how to get followers for a movement that blasts people back to the stone age”? Answer: Make it consensus and paint a scarlet “D” on anyone’s head who even questions the idea that coal and oil are the devil incarnate. That is exactly how this works. It sounds harsh and it is. Very harsh and very, very cruel covered by the lies that these people care about other people. It’s how you win if you have a view that runs again the self-interest of humans. It’s how you get rational people to blindly push other humans into ovens. In reality, it is the super-explotation of the instinct that kept humans alive in the far distant past. We don’t use it to stay alive now, so it’s up for grabs by whomever decides to use it.
Hmm it looks like your site ate my first comment (it was super long)
so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I wrote and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog.
I as well am an aspiring blog blogger but I’m still new to the whole
thing. Do you have any points for newbie blog writers?
I’d definitely appreciate it.