by Judith Curry
The U.S. House Subcommittee on Environment Hearing on Policy Relevant Climate Issues in Context will be held tomorrow, April 25 at 10 a.m.
You may recall that I have had two previous posts on this Hearing:
The Hearing was originally scheduled for March 6; it was cancelled owing to a major snow storm that was predicted to hit Washington DC (which did not materialize). I’ve checked the weather forecast, no sign of snow. So 95% certainty that I will be testifying tomorrow (the 5% is associated with the fact that I can barely talk today owing to a bad cold).
The website for the hearing is [here]. The hearing will be streamed live, and there will also be a recorded video.
Hearing Charter
Key excerpts:
The purpose of the hearing is to provide Members a high level overview of the most important scientific, technical, and economic factors that should guide climate-related decision-making this Congress. Specifically, this hearing will examine the current understanding of key areas of climate science necessary to inform decision-making on potential mitigation options.
Witnesses
- Dr. Judith Curry, Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Dr. William Chameides, Dean and Professor, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University
- Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, President, Copenhagen Consensus Center
Background
Climate science—and climate-related regulatory actions informed by such science—are among the most complex and controversial issues facing policymakers. After several years of relatively quiet legislative and regulatory activity within Congress and the Executive Branch, climate policy is again receiving renewed attention.
Since winning re-election in November, 2012, President Obama has increasingly signaled his intention to propose significant, new executive actions and regulatory measures aimed at addressing climate concerns. At his inaugural address in January, the President stated:
We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.
The President elaborated on this at last month’s State of the Union address, and indicated he would direct his Cabinet to propose specific actions for his consideration. Specifically, he stated:
But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.
The good news is we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
While it is unclear what specific form the President’s proposals will take, it has been widely reported that new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations restricting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plant facilities will serve as a centerpiece of the President’s climate efforts. In March 2012, EPA proposed greenhouse gas regulations for new power plants.1 While this rule has yet to be finalized, the Agency’s Regulatory Impact Analysis that accompanied this proposal emphasized some of the key challenges associated with incorporating uncertain scientific, technological, and economic information into such regulatory decisions:
When attempting to assess the incremental economic impacts of carbon dioxide emissions, the analyst faces a number of serious challenges. A recent report from the National Academies of Science (NRC 2009) points out that any assessment will suffer from uncertainty, speculation, and lack of information about (1) future emissions of greenhouse gases, (2) the effects of past and future emissions on the climate system, (3) the impact of changes in climate on the physical and biological environment, and (4) the translation of these environmental impacts into economic damages. As a result, any effort to quantify and monetize the harms associated with climate change will raise serious questions of science, economics, and ethics and should be viewed as provisional.
This characterization is indicative of the likely challenges associated with future climate-driven regulatory proposals as well. Therefore, it is likely that Congressional review and response of such proposals will be heavily informed by the understanding of a combination of science, technological feasibility, and value judgments such as economic tradeoffs and opportunity costs.
The purpose of this hearing is to examine key factors that will guide these decisions, particularly as they relate to the understanding of climate change-related risks facing the country, associated probabilities and uncertainties, and the costs and benefits of various mitigation proposals.
Bjorn Lomborg’s testimony
Bjorn Lomborg made his testimony publicly available [here], after the Hearing was postponed. An unusual move, but why not. His testimony is definitely worth reading in its entirety, and it has lots of graphs. His summary points:
How should we tackle global warming?
Don’t continue with the old-fashioned, failed policy of the past twnty years. When green energy isn’t ready we’re likely to spend vast sums of money on cutting CO2 only marginally.
Instead, we should focus on investing dramatically more in R&D of green energy. This will likely bring about green technologies over the next 20-40 years that will be cheaper than fossil fuels, which mean everyone will adopt them.
In short, the solution is not to make fossil fuels so expensive that nobody wants them – because that will never work – but to make green energy so cheap that everyone wants them.
JC summary: Well this should be interesting! Tomorrow at 10 a.m. I will post a link to my written testimony and text of my verbal comments.
Interesting indeed. I wonder if “global lukewarming” will start to be part of the mainstream discussion from which economics and policy can be recalibrated.
A May 6 snow storm would probably end the CAGW discussion :)
I know you will knock it out of the park. I look forward to see how it went.
What is the name of the organization of which Dr. Bjørn Lomborg is president?
The Copenhague Consensus Center does not tell us if what it produces is a consensus assessment:
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/projects/copenhagen-consensus-2012
Perhaps the word “Consensus” is just a brand.
So much to do, so little time.
Noteworthy:
> Copenhagen Consensus Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
All donations are tax-deductible in the United States.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/about/support-our-work
I could not find the list of donors on their website.
ho hum
“Since its inception in 2006 until end of 2011, the Copenhagen Consensus Center has received funding from the Danish state. Where recent projects have received any additional funding, you can find that information on our website under the descriptions of those projects.”
> ho hum
Here are the projects:
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/projects
Clicking on the “projects’ page” does not give much information.
Here’s the only thing we could find ” on the “projects’ description page”:
> The “Bill Gates for a day” is sponsored by Tuborgfondet.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/projects/bill-gates-for-a-day
Our emphasis.
***
Let’s also note that funding, sponsoring, donatiing and supporting might have different connotations, for instance:
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/about/support-our-work
Ho hum indeed
Oh evil tuborg.
report yourself to Dr, Loo
http://www.tuborgfondet.dk/Tuborgsgroennefond/Pages/Defikstoette.aspx
> Oh evil tuborg.
Yet another misrepresentation.
willard, you deny that tuborg is evil?
It’s pretty simple. you havent taken a position on much of anything.
So.. I have you down for this.
you think lomborg is a fraud
you dont care for transparency or openness
and you’re against minority views being published.
A semi-open process:
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/projects/copenhagen-consensus-2012/outcome
The Copenhague Consensus Center has not taken position on the very, very, very, very important issue of traceability.
And of course they dont make policy recommendations, they make recommendations to donors about causes
“You will note, when you look at the raw list of Copenhagen Consensus 2008 results, that we have not included two of the highly-recommended investments: the implementation of the Doha Round (ranked second) or the management of heart attack victims in underdeveloped nations (ranked eleventh). The reason for these omissions is that we believe that these interventions are more relevant to policy-makers than to philanthropists and donors.”
“As well as summarizing each challenge and its solutions, and explaining where you can find the original research, the Copenhagen Consensus Guide to Giving provides a brief list of some inspiring organizations that are actively working in the area that we describe.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center does not intend to endorse any particular organization. We have not closely vetted the work that they do. We do think, however, that it is sensible to point to reputable organizations working in the areas where small donations could make a big difference.
In some cases, the Copenhagen Consensus Center has cooperated in different ways with these organizations.
In every case, we recommend that you conduct your own research before deciding where to make a donation.”
Of course if they were making recommendations to policy makers, then we have standing to demand that they abide by the strictest forms of traceability and openness. Since they make recommendations about your free giving, you are free to choose not to give and free to disregard their recommendations.
Its pretty simple. If a scientist is going to take public money ( my tax dollars ) to make a policy recommendation about what the government will do with my money, then I have standing to demand an open and accountable process. if some non profit wants to take donor money to publish recommendations about where I should freely donate my money, I could give a rats ass about their process. Their donors, of course have standing to raise a fuss, and they probably should.
http://fixtheclimate.com/component-1/the-solutions-new-research/black-carbon/
what are the perspective papers… how interesting.. they publish a point and counter point? imagine that.
> [T]hey dont make policy recommendation.
Yet another untruth.
Let it be noted that this latest squirrel has nothing to do with the fact that the Copenhague Consensus Center has not taken position on the very, very, very, very important issue of traceability.
***
Let also be noted that this food fight is being initiated while crickets are still chirping on another thread:
> Crickets.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/22/do-scientific-assessments-need-to-be-consensual-to-be-authoritative/#comment-315375
Not being one, w. hasn’t a clue to skeptics.
==========
Love the sound of your ad hominems, koldie.
Sing a song of sixpence
A pocketful of hence;
willard wouldn’t wonder whence,
Were he not so dense.
==============
willard you are being most uncharitable toward them.
One could choose to look at them and ask the question.
what good can we take from their approach..
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/projects/copenhagen-consensus-2008/research/global-warming
‘For a shorter version of the challenge paper please download the executive summary. The challenge paper on ‘Global Warming’ was also critiqued in two seperate perspective papers by Christopher Green and Anil Markandya.”
oh, they publish an opposing position. Novel thought that.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/PP_Global_Warming_-_Green_0.pdf
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/PP_Global_Warming_-_Markandya_0.pdf
So of course a charitable person might look to them for good practices to adopt and improve. Or Not.
Simple Question. Has the IPCC process been successful? If not, since the planet is at risk is there anything of interest to learn from other folks?
You oppose transparency, and openness and publishing minority views.
How’s that working for the IPCC?
> you are being most uncharitable toward them.
Again, this is untrue. I took no position about the project itself. Just a basic UX check.
My first point was about the name of the project: the Copenhagen Consensus Center. This is not a point about Lomborg.
My second point was about the concept of consensus assessment, which was mangled on the previous thread. This point is not about Lomborg.
My third point is about its 501(c) status, which I find intriguing. This point is about the 501(c) status itself, with its connotations regarding transparency.
My fourth point is about traceability, which is not exactly about the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
***
Perhaps I should have said that I applaud the Copenhagen Consensus Center’s efforts and accept as wise most of its recommendations. Even if to argue that (a) our recommendations cost almost nothing and (b) we should focus on them instead of others is self-contradictory. As if this mattered with my critical points anyway.
Hah, the sharp toothed critique is a grill, removable at will.
=============
My four points are still there, if you wish to take a bite.
Don’t wait until they’re as kold as you are, kim.
Your value to me isn’t as conversant, but convulsant.
==========
Enjoy your red herring while it’s hot, then.
Should we expect a post from Judith tut-tutting the Copenhagen Consensus Centre??
“The website for the hearing is [here].” The [here] is not working.
fixed, thx
In regard to a practical question asked here on Climate Etc:
FOMD’s (no-waffle) number: 0.70
Peter Davies (no-waffle) number: 0.20
Susan Corwin’s (ultra-waffle) number: (pure waffle)
Judith Curry’s (no-waffle?) number: _________
Peter Davies deserves special credit as (so far) the sole skeptic/denialist who is will to state any sort of quantitative opinion whatsoever. That was well and bravely done, Peter Davies!
What is the probability that James Hansen’s scientific worldview is substantially correct?
Two decades of being wrong is a really good indicator.
In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.’ http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/505.htm
Has Hansen embraced the correct climate paradigm? Deterministic chaos rather than ordered forcing? One is 100% correct and the other – the CO2 control knob – is 100% incorrect.
‘The Climate Etc Practical Challenge State a no-waffle numerical probability for the statement “Hansen’s science is right.”
Huh? which parts of his science.
1. His temperature record? it’s 90% correct.
2. Everything else is all over the map
most importantly his ethics is 100% wrong.
Hi Steven
I am not so sure about CO2 sensitivity, here is another way of doing it:
If CO2 concentration in the early 1700’s was about 280 ppm, and currently 390ppm, gives ratio of 1.4.CET across two 50 year periods
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET1690-1960.htm
here temperature difference is 0.6 degree C, thus doubling of CO2 with a linear law gives sensitivity of 0.84C as shown here http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-S.gif
Logarithmic law would produce a bit less.
What’s Wrong With That then ?
Vuk.
you cant neglect all the other forcings.
So first calculate the total temperature change. Then the change in forcing ( all forcings ) that will give you a ballpark of lambda
your lambda should be somewhere between .3 and 1. (Hansen would say
.75 C/Wm^2 )
then lambda * 3.7W gives you something on the order of the answer.
mm
read this. just to get an idea
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-012-1375-3
Ta. It’s good I don’t have to make a living out of this sort of thing. I’ll stick with magntics, another thing I don’t understand. :)
p.s. van Hateren: The temperature rise from 1820 to 1950 can be attributed for about 70 % to increased solar irradiance
Dr.S. would go nuts.
Here is another way to do climate forecasts. The same cycle has repeated for ten thousand years. Warm, Cool, Warm, Cool, Warm, Cool. Use that peer reviewed data as a forecast for the future.
+ 10
It is just nonsense of course. Temperatures change all the time – some of this could be quite problematic for modern societies.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/04/21/blogs/dotkaufman.html –
There are changes to hydrology on many scales – e.g. the AMO and PDO and US drought.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/USdrought_zps2629bb8c.jpg.html?sort=3&o=15
Australian floods, droughts and cyclones.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=44
The demise of the Minoan civilisation and the drying of the Sahel that changed the course of human history.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=103
Is there a risk that warming will tip the system into rapid and extreme cooling? Without much doubt.
Given that “James Hansen’s scientific worldview” includes such nonsense as a Venus-style “runaway greenhouse” scenario, I’d rate the numeric probability that it is “substantially correct” at about 0.005%. That is, 5 in 10,000.
Of course, mine is not an expert opinion, but I’ll point out that the Earth is spinning, at a rate sufficient to produce a geostrophic effect everywhere poleward of about 5 degrees of latitude, which makes Venus a totally unrealistic model for any atmospheric effect.
As for the Vatican, the melting scenario would certainly include enough time to develop the technology to pick the whole thing up and move it upriver. Anyway, the Vatican, and the entire Curia it houses, would be a small loss to Humanity.
Manmade CO2 is one molecule in ten thousand, not five.
http://popesclimatetheory.com/page16.html
Actually, I mistyped: S/B “5 in 100,000”. But it didn’t have anything to do with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, man-made or otherwise. Rather the massive improbability (IMO) of a Venus-style hot-surface scenario on a spinning planet.
Venus’ surface is isothermal. Day and night, equator and pole, all the same temperture. Day length is 116 earth days. Winds at the surface are practically nil. What are the possible explanations then for the isothermal surface? What keeps the night side surface as warm as the day side?
@David Springer…
Winds at the surface are far from “nil.” According to Wiki
And…
This is more than sufficient to transfer heat from warmer to cooler areas near the surface. Because it is locked by friction to a non-rotating surface, there is (effectively) no geostrophic effect to counter a rapid resolution of temperature differences. Which is massively different from Earth, which was my point.
Interestingly, Venus has very strong winds at higher altitudes, presumably driven by the action of Solar radiation on potential phase changes in sulfur oxide clouds. Isolation of different temperatures appears to be aided by cyclostrophic winds in what amounts to a planet-sized hurricane. GCM’s have not yet been able to reproduce the observed characteristics of the Venusian atmosphere [Lebonnois et al. (2010)] which says something regarding the reliability of (and circularity in) GCM models for Earth.
Lebonnois et al. (2010) Superrotation of Venus’ atmosphere analyzed with a full general circulation model by Sébastien Lebonnois, Frédéric Hourdin, Vincent Eymet, Audrey Crespin, Richard Fournier, and François Forget Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 115, E06006, doi:10.1029/2009JE003458, 2010
JC says: “The Hearing was originally scheduled for May 6; it was cancelled owing to a major snow storm that was predicted to hit Washington DC (which did not materialize.)”
______
May 6 ? That can’t be right. Do you mean March 6?
The snow did materialize, it just went a little more to the north.
The weather forecasts do sometimes miss a little or a lot.
The climate forecasts miss a lot or a lot more.
oops, fixed
Judith
writing this with great difficulty on a kindle whilst in austria
looking at records back to 1235ad it is obvious we live in a highly benign climatic period. please tell congress that extremes were far worse in the past than they are today. there is masses of documentary evidence to support this. todays temperatures are nothing out of the ordinary
tonyb
Here it is late in April and there is still snow and cold in the news. It has been snowing since last October, all around the Northern Hemisphere. Houston has had several record lows lately, including today.
When the oceans are warm and the Arctic opens, it does snow more and put an upper bound on Global Temperature. Go tell them that!
It is really stupid to do something stupid about CO2 when there is this much snow on the ground in Late April. We can afford to study this more before we start the stupid stuff.
I was recently informed that I am not a Skeptic. A Skeptic has doubt.
I was told that I was an Unbeliever of significant manmade global warming.
According to the Webster definitions, that is correct.
When Texas gets colder, the arctic likely gets warmer.
YOU GOT IT RIGHT! Texas did get colder because the Arctic was warmer with lower sea ice extent. That is why it snows more. Warm oceans do cause more snow and more snow does cause colder. The Arctic did not get warmer because Texas was colder, but Texas did get colder because the Arctic was warmer.
JCH
No global warming then?
Manacker, we have had global warming since the cold part of the little ice age until 1998. It is over or nearly over. The oceans are warm and the snows have started that will limit the upper bound of temperature and carry or drive us into the next little ice age or something similar.
I’m in Houston and its bleeding cold, playing hell with my joints.
I’m in Austin and the brass monkeys here are worried.
BREAKING NEWS
Chief Hydrologist and James Hansen both correct!
Anthony Watts/WUWT shows the path forward !!!
As a vivid demonstration that Chief Hydrologist and James Hansen *both* are correct, Anthony Watts/WUWT direct our attention to this week’s (fabulous!) video NASA|SDO: Three Years of Sun in Three Minutes.
The attention of Climate Etc readers is directed particularly to the multi-wavelength observations (starting at time 2:35). Longer emission wavelengths (which sustain the sun’s energy balance) are shown at upper left, shorter emission wavelengths (which are modulated by the sun’s magnetic “weather”) are shown in the remaining three quadrants.
• Hansen’s world of predictable energy balance is reflected in (a) the Sun’s featureless glow at energy-carrying wavelengths, and (b) the smooth secular rise in Earth’s energy imbalance.
• Chief Hydrologist’s world of chaotic weather is reflected in (a) the Sun’s unpredictably chaotic local magnetic fields, and (b) the Earth’s unpredictably chaotic local weather.
Ain’t it good to appreciate the common-sense view that James Hansen is scientifically right about CO2/AGW thermodynamics, and that Chief Hydrologist is scientifically right about dynamically chaotic weather?
Thank you, Anthony Watts/WUWT, for so vividly demonstrating to Climate Etc readers (and to the US Congress) the common-sense likelihood that Chief Hydrologist and James Hansen *both* are scientifically correct!
long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.
Total BS. The recent ten thousand year history is a valid prediction for the next ten thousand years, if something major does not change.
A manmade fraction of a trace gas does not come close to being a major change.
That fraction of a trace gas happens to be the driver of climate. Many skeptics accept this now. Eg Nic Lewis, also Manacker on the last thread accepted there was evidence of enough warming from human CO2 emissions to be the driver of global temperature.
Will the Chief Hydrologist address the origin of the:
a.) Longer emission wavelengths (low energy) and the
b.) Shorter emission wavelengths (high energy radiation)
Do they represent material of different elemental composition?
In 2000 Dr. Donald V. Reams measured the chemical composition of material ejected in “solar energetic particle events” and found successively heavier groups of elements enriched by factors of ~10, ~100, and ~1,000 times their abundances at the solar surface.
The Astrophysical Journal 540: L111–L114 (2000)
http://epact2.gsfc.nasa.gov/don/00HiZ.pdf
I do admit that model output is chaotic. But that comes from unvalidated models that have been wrong for decades.
Actual Climate Data has been really well bounded for ten thousand years. Actual Climate Data has been well bounded in a larger range for 870k years. Well bounded data is not chaotic.
I think it was Chicken Little with “The Sky Is Falling” that first called it chaotic, or was it Mann or was it Hansen?
Chaotic has a meaning in theoretical physics that is not the dictionary meaning of the word. We could go on to discuss strange attractors, Lyapunov characteristic exponents or the topology of the phase space – but we will need some more basic concepts first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
Models are founded on the nonlinear Navier-Stokes partial differential equations and are most certainly chaotic. Small differences in inputs – within the range of plausibility – and changes in couplings produce ‘sensitive dependence’ and ‘structural instability’ which result in multiple solutions on diverging trajectories.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/McWilliams2007F1_zpsd94ab9eb.gif.html
Was it Jules Henri Poincaré or does it owe more to Edward Lorenz?
Models are founded on the nonlinear Navier-Stokes partial differential equations and are most certainly chaotic.
Yes the models are certainly chaotic! The models have shown no skill for decades! Actual data is well bounded for thousands of years!
Again – chaotic doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means.
Chaos in climate manifests as abrupt change between climate states – http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10136#toc
Your stability is an illusion created by the tendency of climate to move to certain states – glacial and interglacial notably in the Quaternary. The extremes of these states are very problematic for humans, the evolution towards them rapid, the system exceedingly complex and the prognosis uncertain.
@Ellison
Change from glacial to interglacial is abrupt. The other direction is not abrupt.
Pay attention to Pope. He’s got a lot more understanding of this than you do.
@Ellison
The warm extreme has not been at all problematic for civilization. In fact it’s what allowed civilization to flourish. What on earth caused you to write that both extremes are problematic? Maybe you should slow down, think more, and blurt less.
Ah – Springer – a prime example of little understanding and a big mouth?
While the complete transition from glacials and interglacials and vice versa happens faster in one direction than the other – there are in fact multiple equilibria and not just 2 points. Transitions are always abrupt as the system shifts mode due to an internal and chaotic reorganisation.
‘Nonlinear phenomena characterize all aspects of global change dynamics, from the Earth’s climate system to human decision-making (Gallagher and Appenzeller, 1999). Past records of climate change are perhaps the most frequently cited examples of nonlinear dynamics, especially where certain aspects of climate, e.g., the thermohaline circulation of the North Atlantic ocean, suggest the existence of thresholds, multiple equilibria, and other features that may result in episodes of rapid change (Stocker and Schmittner, 1997). As described in Kabat et al. (2003), the Earth’s climate system includes the natural spheres (e.g., atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere), the anthrosphere (e.g., economy, society, culture), and their complex interactions (Schellnhuber, 1998). These interactions are the main source of nonlinear behavior, and thus one of the main sources of
uncertainty in our attempts to predict the effects of global environmental change.’ http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/pep/Rial2004.NonlinearitiesCC.pdf
I find it difficult to even imagine slow and gradual change. How could that be in a system constantly crossing tipping points?
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097
Here is a proxy for much of global rainfall variability over the Holocene.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=103
It shows the drought that contributed to the demise of the Minoan civilisation and the change from La Nina to El Nino patterns 5000 years ago that resulted in the drying of the Sahel and changed the course of human civilisation. It is indeed true that Warmer states are generally kinder to people – but droughts lasting hundreds of years or biblical scale floods are somewhat problematic.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
The reality is addressed in the authoritative NAS reference I keep linking to – it is not my problem if you fail to research or understand. You need merely ask rather than make pompous, arm waving, simplistic and empty assertions.
‘The global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.’ http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/jhurrell/Docs/hurrell.modeling_approach.bams10.pdf
At the surface both weather and climate display emergent behaviour characteristic of the broad class of complex dynamical systems. At top of atmosphere things are simpler. There is energy in and energy out. Energy in changes very little but the climate response is non-linear and quite unpredictable as the particular passage of the TAR suggests.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=26
AGW space cadets such as FOMBS practice various deceits. Three of them are apparent here. The IPCC ceases to be the author of the quote – in ‘climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system’ – and it becomes something that is attributed to me. The second deliberate deceit is that the subject of the quote is changed from climate to weather. The 3rd is simply to shift the response away from the original comment losing the essential context.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315426
Dishonesty and deceit appears to be the sine qua non of climate discourse. Regardless of the complexities of the science, the substantial unknowns, the limits of maths and physics – it all comes back to a simplified narrative. There is no room for subtlety and curiosity even in forums such as this. We are infested by space cadets with little understanding, a certainty of high moral purpose and a pre-conceived agenda. Science is lost in the propaganda battles of the climate war. A dangerous game for either side to play.
It is doubly dangerous when emergent climate patterns are predicated on non-linear responses and where these patterns of atmospheric and ocean variability lead to negligible warming over a decade to 3 more. As the simplistic global warming narrative implodes – it seems possible that we will lose the impetus for carbon mitigation for a generation at least just when it is most critical.
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
“Longer emission wavelengths (which sustain the sun’s energy balance) are shown at upper left, shorter emission wavelengths (which are modulated by the sun’s magnetic “weather”) are shown in the remaining three quadrants.”
What absolute bollocks. Shorter wavelengths are thermalized in deeper water than longer wavelengths.
Dude! Mo bettah yah check yer solar power spectrum *and* your “bollocks”, Doc Martyn!
Hint 300 Angstroms == 0.03 microns.
Heck, there’s pretty much zero solar power-flux left, by the time the wavelength gets *that* short!
So all of the solar variability, is at wavelengths that carry only infinitesimal power. And at the wavelengths that *do* carry power, the solar heating-power is steady and smooth.
That’s the common-sense reason why James Hansen and Chief Hydrologist can *both* be right, eh DocMartyn?
Pillock.
The short wave spectrum of the sun, the near and hard uv, changes by +/- 6% during the solar cycle, even though the total output remains pretty constant. Even you might have noted that the sun isn’t a 5500K black body and all those magnetic storms on the surface are pumping out very short wave radiation and particles that will become the solar wind. The absorption spectrum of the oceans, that make up 70% of the Earths surface, are different for blue and red light.
Think before you post.
Fan,
We should support DocMartyn in his recent *excellent* analysis!
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/#comment-313686
I think DocMartyn the scientist did a good job with this. The GISS is a land+ocean data set and so anything derived from this leans to a transient estimate.
About half the heat is entering the ocean without leading to an immediate temperature rise, so that with 70% of the surface covered by ocean, we can pro-rate the eventual temperature change.
2.37 = 0.7*(1/2)*dT + 0.3*dT
Solving for dT, the equilibrium climate sensitivity is approximately 3.6C for doubling of CO2.
dT =2.37/0.65 = 3.65
This is above the mean estimate of 3C that most climate models have been converging to. A plateau in global warming is in keeping with pushing the number toward the aggregated estimate.
Speaking of speaking in public, the last time I tried was 25 years ago at an AA meeting. After, “Hi my name is pokerguy and I’m an alcoholic,” my mind went blank. It had to be one of the ten worst speaking performances in the history of AA. When I finally stumbled back to my seat covered in flop sweat, the two middle-aged women who happened to be sitting on either side of me knitting as they listened to the speakers, literally leaned away, as if I might be contagious….
I’d been sober 3 months, and wisely decided that speaking wasn’t for me. All I can say is good thing I’m not a renowned climate scientist like Dr. Curry. The mere thought of that kind of pressure is enough to bring back that flop sweat.
Keep coming back!
Omanuel is right! The friends of Bill are cherished friends to me and to all my family … our congratulations and sincere respect are extended to you, pokerguy.
Judith Curry
Many thanks for heads up. Should be an interesting hearing.
Look forward to hearing and reading more.
Max
Please let me join with many Climate Etc posters, in extending our best wishes for an enjoyable, successful testimony session … and extending also, our appreciation and thanks for sustaining this fine forum.
Godspeed and good luck to you, Judith Curry!
There is no doubt that Lomborgs statement makes sense economically:
So simple it hurts.
And it also makes the access to reliable, low-cost energy available to all – even the poorest among us, rather than depriving this segment of this access, so is also the humanitarian way to go.
Smart guy.
Max
However it begs the question. It assumes that such technologies either exist or are within reach. This is not in evidence.
The solution is to do a bit of both
Nah, make fossil fuels expensive enough to pay for the environmental damage theses fuels cause. To put it bluntly, I’m fed up with polluters getting a free ride. “You break it, you pay for it” is one of my mottos.
Make fossil fuels more expensive with a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and you polluters will have to decide between spending your tax savings for your fossil fuel addiction or spending it on wine, women, and song. Anyone who doesn’t choose the later three is a moron in my book.
‘The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.
The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization. http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation
You may tax as you like – if you can get the political support. This seems increasingly unlikely for economic reasons and as the world continues to not warm for a decade to 3 more.
At the level of tax in any country in the world that has a carbon price it is so marginal as to be a joke. At any price that would encourage substitution – there would be substantial increases in energy costs and falls in economic productivity. The recipe is one for ongoing failure.
But even if you could show that that is a sensible approach (which I am not convinced about) you have to prove that something has been ‘broken’.
And I’m buggered if I can see what that is……some mythical ‘correct climate’ of your imagination?
I like to breath clean air. Fossil fuel fools don’t give a damn about clean air. Lot’s of ’em are smokers whose lungs are so contaminated they wouldn’t know clean air if they breathed it.
I don’t want fossil fuel fools making the globe any warmer than it is. I like it the way it is. What right do they have to change it? NONE ! If they don’t like earth the way it is, I say let ’em find another planet.
@max_ok
But you still haven’t identified any actual ‘harm’.
Or anything that has been ‘broken’.
And in my cold part of the world, a temperature increase would be positively beneficial.
Sceptic, the last time I flew into LA I couldn’t see the ground for the smog. That’s what I call a broken environment.
I like the climate the way it is. I don’t care what you want. I only care what I want. Anyway, if you don’t like your “cool part of the world,” why live there?
If you have a local LA problem, go fix it in LA. I believe that you need to chop down all the orange trees and the smog will go away.
But I don’t see any reason why I should worry about your local LA problem from many thousands of miles away. My climate is OK but ..another few degrees of warmth will make it even better. Bring them on!
As to your inane remark
‘Anyway, if you don’t like your “cool part of the world,” why live there?’…the same applies to you.
If you don’t like LA – why go there?
Americans are sooo parochial. There’s another 98% of the Earth’s area and another 6,800,000,000 people who don’t live in the USA. Our needs/wants differ from yours.
Sceptic, if you think air pollution is not a global problem you don’t know much.
I’m sorry, for the “inane” remark. I had a libertarian moment, an Ayn Rand moment, or whatever you want to call that “it’s all about me” attitude. You seem to have a bad case of it, yourself.
manacker | April 24, 2013 at 5:00 pm |
You have a very strange definition of “no doubt”, “makes sense”, “simple” and “humanitarian”.
Surely you recognise that the money to pay for Lomborg’s pie-in-the-skyism must come from someone. Who would that be? Oh yes, the poorest among us.
And Lomborg proposes a straw man you ought have caught: “so expensive that nobody wants them” is a wild mischaracterisation of every proposal yet put forward. Why would anyone let such an obvious mistake of Lomborg’s go by unchallenged?
When you say “low-cost”, you mean subsidized, and we know this is not the lowest cost way to deliver energy: the lowest cost way to deliver resources to a Market is the Capitalist Market mechanism, and no other, without subsidy, interference by expert panels, or other substitute for the democracy of the individual consumers and sellers in the Market.
When you say “reliable”, do you mean to imply consumers are too stupid to choose the right level of reliability, and you — a foreigner — are the only right person to tell them what they do and do not need?
I should like to see some real science behind the AGW claims for carbon dioxide – substituting “ideal” gas pre Van der Waals for real gas with real properties and processes to give a non existant “empty space” atmosphere and no Water Cycle and no rain in the Carbon Cycle and so on, appears to me very good reason to junk the lot –
if they are serious about this:
“The purpose of the hearing is to provide Members a high level overview of the most important scientific, technical, and economic factors that should guide climate-related decision-making this Congress. Specifically, this hearing will examine the current understanding of key areas of climate science necessary to inform decision-making on potential mitigation options.”
Good luck JC, I hope your paper at least gives them pause for thought long enough for a change of gear into rational thinking.
Wagathon gives an excellent analysis of the Global Climate Movement:
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/the-academic-winter-of-global-warming-alarmism/
The latest weather update for Washington, DC is for the possibility of fire and brimstone with a slight chance of occasional leviathan and behemoth sightings in a slightly altered parallel universe.
Obviously you have never been to Washington, D.C. It’s a beautiful place. Even right-wing crackpots like it.
What was it the Euros always loved to say? Something like, ‘Oh yes, we love Americans: it’s the American government we don’t like…’
No, that was the Iranians.
The American government is the best government the world has ever know. Foreigners envy us for having the best government, and try to copy us.
Wisdom is possible. It’s precious so by definition it’s rare. The founders had it. The keepers don’t. These are all simple things we all can discern, and expect, even lament, but there is nothing we can do about it. That is why, above all else, only the individual has meaning.
Waggy says: “Wisdom is possible. It’s precious so by definition it’s rare. The founders had it. … That is why, above all else, only the individual has meaning”
______
Ha Ha, that’s a good one ! The founders owned slaves. As an individual a slave had meaning all right, but a very different meaning than the slave master.
1) I do not like Washington DC, I cannot stand French pompous architecture.
2) The US governement is incompetent.
1) You have no taste.
2) The U.S. Government is as good as it gets.
“value judgments”
Yes, you need a crowbar for the changepurse to get congress to spend money on even the little things. I mean they really spend other people’s money frugally, to a fault.
Andrew
Don’t forget to tell congress about incontrovertible evidence from the Nile region of drastic climate change: the centuries of low flooding which ended the Old Kingdom, the decades of overflooding which ended the Middle Kingdom, the return to decades of low flood which ended the New Kingdom.
It’s in the history and in the sediments. I’m a skeptic, and even I believe in climate change! (Not sure if you can fix it with taxes, imposts, regulations etc but, hey, those priests of Amon didn’t do all that well with their fancy calculations and incantations. Start every millennium with renewed optimism about manipulating climate, I always say.)
The interpretation of the pharaohs dream is the first example of climate forecasting.
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/PREPRINTS/JosephsDream-Abstract.pdf
In Nature uncertainty prevails,
no good feeling sensitive
about it. Sometimes the
paleo climate record
says hot …
… then it’s not.
… yet ice-cores a’plenty,
… say the forcing is TWENTY.
——————–
That is, doubling CO2 yields 20 C of polar warming.
Uhhh … those *ARE* the pure-paleo pure-observational numbers, eh Beth Cooper?
Yikes.
The Vatican’s team is tackling a mighty big, mighty grave responsibility, eh Beth Cooper?
Godspeed their efforts.
Beth sez ” in Nature uncertainty prevails”
Ain’t that the truth. You put your life at risk every time you leave your house. It’s best just to stay home, and peer out the windows occasionally to check on things.
Hope you feel better soon, Judy.
Ozzie Zehner would make a good witness to testify on solar:
Ozzie Zehner’s an able, and well-informed speaker who makes excellent points.
If everyone, or even most people, to everything, or even many things, exactly, thoughtlessly, negligently wrong, then they shoot themselves in the foot — or more likely, they injure us with their mistakes, and it is generally impossible to devise an Economy, a Market, that fully prices every Externality far in advance, that fully informs consumers before committing to disastrous outcomes, and thus avoid these expenses.
However, at the same time, many of the assumptions built into the arguments made in Zehner’s book and presentations are themselves subjects of sharply-divided debate.
Remove the assumption that coal will make up half the source of electricity for electric cars, push inefficiency and pollution out of the manufacturing process by learning how to do it better in the course of the evolution of the technology and its economies of scale, and suddenly the life cycle costs tilt the opposite direction sharply.
Too much or too little optimism and pessimism both make idiots of analysts.
Interesting presentation by Ozzie Zehner. The motivation behind alternative energy schemes is always two-fold. The primary one is to provide alternatives to finite, non-renewable fossil fuel energy sources. Secondarily, to provide carbon-neutral strategies to mitigate the risk of potentially damaging AGW trends.
It’s win, win. Ozzie suggests to ride a bike, keep trees for shade, continue to conserve, etc, etc. What’s not to like in those suggestions?
Canman,
Thank you for this link.
Good presentation. It would be an eye opener to many people.
The more I look into his channel on Youtube, the more interesting variations on his theme I find.
Ozzie Zehner would certainly be worth a topic, if not an entire category, at Climate Etc.
The Earth is like a greenhouse. You could live inside a greenhouse and believe, ‘this is what the world is like.’ You might in fact prefer to believe that because it’s cold outside.
“You could live inside a greenhouse and believe, ‘this is what the world is like.’ ”
_____
No, I couldn’t, but an extremely weak-minded person might. He could be unaware the greenhouse is enclosed in glass, and fail to notice rain or snow falling on the glass. I suspect even a household pet would know the difference between the greenhouse and the world outside.
http://www.lomborg.com/sites/default/files/Congress_testimony_April_2013_3.pdf
Under, “The most important policy-relevant issues facing decision-‐makers”:
“It is important to realize that economic models show that the overall impact of a moderate warming (1–‐2oC) will be beneficial whereas higher temperatures expected towards the end of the century will have a negative net impact. Thus, as indicated in Figure 1, global warming is a net benefit now and will likely stay so till about 2070, after which it will turn into a net cost.”
One would hope were these acutally the most important issues, Dr. (of Public Administration) Lomborg of Denmark would want to get his facts right, so we know he would appreciate being informed of some glaring errors and omissions in his prepared notes.
1. Dr. Nordhaus has specifically, pointedly and emphatically asserted in public that Dr. Lomborg’s use of DICE is incorrect, that the claims of current net benefits are completely false, and that Dr. Lomborg is attempting to apply principles of cost-benefit analyses with inappropriate tools. As Dr. Nordhaus crafted the tools, one would hope Dr. Lomborg has by now made appropriate adjustments to his notes and won’t be in the position of committing scientific fraud (Economics is still a science, right?) in front of a committee of Congress.
2. Dr. Lomborg’s remarks about carbon tax are wildly inaccurate. We have seen the exact opposite of what he asserts wherever carbon taxes have been implemented, and Dr. Lomborg ought, as a Dr. of Public Administration, know this. Further, Dr. Lomborg specifically excludes from his examination the most relevant models of pricing carbon, those currently being studied by lawmakers in the USA, of fee and dividend, which will have all the benefits these notes say do not exist, and not a single one of the drawbacks. One is certain Dr. Lomborg would want a chance to correct these mistakes before speaking in the morning.
3. Dr. Lomborg’s managed-economy conclusions might apply to a tiny state like Cuba or Denmark with a long history of Communism or Socialism and a taste for tyrannical control of all decisions by a politburo, but for America, one must believe the values enshrined in the US Constitution would make his recommendations antithetical. Also, they’re by far the most expensive and least effectual proposals anyone has seriously set forward. One hopes Dr. Lomborg does not commit this faux pas.
Bart R obviously opposes transparency, openness, publishing minority views.
Bart R is against more discourse.
willard (@nevaudit) | April 25, 2013 at 1:09 am |
Actually, quite the opposite. And I’m glad you brought up this point.
I applaud Dr. Lomborg for transparently posting his notes of what, in Denmark, are actually majority views (we have to recognize that far more of the world subscribes to Socialism than to American values) of collectivism, state paternalism, and the power of technocrats over the democracy of individual freedoms and choice. But I’m sure Dr. Lomborg would publish minority views that didn’t oppose his own, if he benefitted from it somehow.
The openness of Dr. Lomborg’s approach allows, for example, Dr. Nordhaus to read Dr. Lomborg’s abuse of Dr. Nordhaus’ tools and ideas and warn Dr. Lomborg of these multiple, manifest errors. That’s a good thing. Can you imagine the embarrassment if Dr. Lomborg only found out after speaking to a committee of Congress that he was committing scientific fraud (or would be, if he were competent to understand what he’d written)?
Bart R,
Since you are being critical to Dr. Lomborg’s testimony, and that Dr. Lomborg presents himself as the honest broker that the IPCC has not been to date, and that IPCC’s problems are about transparency, openness, publishing minority views, and against discourse, therefore you are against all of the above.
Whatever you say or not will not change this.
Please.
Do not think that I try to get your attention by saying unsubstantiated things about you. Or that I try to frame your interventions. Or for you to expect me to play fair, because it’s mostly political.
What to expect anyway? Certainly not that our resident Nordhausian scholar, viz. Peter Lang, agrees with you!
I hope you don’t mind me throwing your name in the moshpit for charity’s sake.
Best regards,
w
PS: Sorry not to have replied to your very interesting comment on another thread about having been a quant thug. I also forgot to remind you that your Prezi about BARTR still has empty stations.
willard (@nevaudit) | April 25, 2013 at 8:28 am |
The Prezi is fully shareable; by all means make a copy and fill in stations wheresoever you with.
Prezi for me is a doodlepad, a mind-map tool, a place for visual humor and navel gazing and exorcising obsessions. If you find something you like, by all means use it. Or even comment on it.
See, I’m in favor of openness, transparency, that minority view stuff and all that more discourse nonsense. Go to! Go to! Don’t wait on permission.
willard (@nevaudit) | April 25, 2013 at 8:28 am |
You seem to think change is good.
Or at least to ironically present fallacies to make points people with keener wit than mine would enjoy. I’m just wondering why you expect people with keener wit than mine to be reading your replies to me?
No one is only one thing. Of course I can be for more discourse, and simultaneously against more discourse; this need not even be by grace of Orwellian Doublespeak or Zen. Every period in a sentence is against more discourse. Every “Post Comment” is, too. And also, is for more, in the expectation of possible reply.
I’m just as against transparency as for it. I have, for example, no desire to see any denizen in a transparent Speedo, or even to know if one is so clad. Likewise about openness — and aren’t we treading on needless redundancy too much superfluously here?
As for minority views.. when have my views ever not represented minority? Be pretty self-defeating to oppose minority views, for me.
If I could suggest, your comments from time to time are a bit obscuritan. You may benefit from emoticons, in particular if they are brightly colored, and possibly if they also flash.
Bart R,
Thank you for your kind words, one of which was new to me.
My comments above were a pastiche of these two:
> you think lomborg is a fraud / you dont care for transparency or openness / and you’re against minority views being published.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315584
> You oppose transparency, and openness and publishing minority views.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315475
Next time, I’ll try to make my references in the thread clearer.
***
After this pastiche, the Syndicate of Black Hat Marketing published its consensus assessment about the practice of phishing thoughts into people’s minds:
> It’s reasonable to assert that you agree to scripts that you haven’t denied. It’s a warranted belief.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/25/congressional-hearing-on-policy-relevant-climate-issues-in-context/#comment-316113
My target audience does seem to have taken the hint, since it now published its consensus assessment. This assessment does not excuse the ignominy. Now we have something that sooner or later will deserve due diligence.
***
Sorry about the lack of emoticons. It would defeat the purpose. I’d rather have a valid Poe, in which case knowing that it is a Poe or not is irrelevant, by application the Minimax theorem. Now that you took my claims at face value, we know how ridiculous they are, if only because it makes us entertain the thought of Denizens in Speedo.
I’ll try Prezi in a few months or so.
Thanks,
w
Here Peter, let me rewrite Bart R for more clarity
Original:
“1. Dr. Nordhaus has specifically, pointedly and emphatically asserted in public that Dr. Lomborg’s use of DICE is incorrect, that the claims of current net benefits are completely false, and that Dr. Lomborg is attempting to apply principles of cost-benefit analyses with inappropriate tools. As Dr. Nordhaus crafted the tools, one would hope Dr. Lomborg has by now made appropriate adjustments to his notes and won’t be in the position of committing scientific fraud (Economics is still a science, right?) in front of a committee of Congress.”
More Clear
“1. Dr. Nordhaus has specifically, pointedly and emphatically and publically asserted that certain uses of DICE are incorrect, that the claims of current net benefits are completely false. Based on his description of the improper use of DICE, we can conclude that he would not approve of Lomborg’s use.
################
Now, there is nothing false in Bart’s description. But It would definitely get the blue pencil since it could lead to misuderstanding.
And truth be told it did lead to a misunderstanding. But Bart knew it would. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing dishonest with that. It’s good game. You think you’re here to reason with folks or to convince them. Disabuse yourself of that notion.
Steven Mosher | April 27, 2013 at 10:13 pm |
Alas that in all this I missed your remarks here.
My intention had been to use a device of repetition of parallel construction to emphasize what I felt would be the obvious responsibility of the author Dr. Lomborg to recognize how he differed from the authority Dr. Nordhaus he was citing in his remarks to the committee of Congress.
While I can’t deny that a younger self may have enjoyed or at least appreciated such shenanigans as you ascribe, my younger self was certainly not so brilliant as to be able to anticipate such havoc from ambiguous writing, and my current self isn’t that brilliant either.
My current shenanigans are pretty much limited to Persian Flaws and mild wordplay.
Peter Lang | April 28, 2013 at 8:53 pm |
Perhaps I’m going about this the wrong way. Maybe it’s a language issue. Is it possible you mean something different by “substantiation” than the definition I, and apparently the rest of the world, use?
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/substantiation
sub·stan·ti·ate (s b-st n sh – t ). tr.v. sub·stan·ti·at·ed, sub·stan·ti·at·ing, sub·stan·ti·ates. 1. To support with proof or evidence; verify: substantiate an accusation.
Q1: Do you recognize Dr. Nordhaus as the author of http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/?pagination=false (“The Rebuttal”)?
Q2: In “The Rebuttal”, do you agree Dr. Nordhaus says, “I did the research and wrote the book on which they base their statement. The skeptics’ summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results.”
Q3: Do you see any substantive way in which Dr. Nordhaus’ criticisms under point six in “The Rebuttal” do not equally apply to Dr. Lomborg’s case that you can name?
Q4: Can you conceive of any way a competent witness testifying to Congress on this matter could be unaware of Dr. Nordhaus’ well-publicized and directly relevant remarks contradicting the uses Dr. Lomborg made of Dr. Nordhaus’ tools?
Either Dr. Lomborg intentionally misled a committee of Congress in his written (but not the verbal portion thereof) testimony, or Dr. Lomborg was incompetent to speak to the matters in which he presents himself an expert.
Or by substantiation, do you mean something else?
Please, be specific. Be precise. Provide a link or a reference to a legitimate source. No fewer than four interlocutors have accepted my substantiation in varying degrees, and no one has provided evidence it is insufficient or incorrect.
All we have is your simple repetition of your claim, absent substantiation.
An example:
> [Y]ou [Bart R] are derogatory about the ‘Sixteen Scientists’ (you called them the ‘Sweet Sixteen’).
I don’t recall Bart R using that term.
(That’s an euphemism.)
I did.
An apology would be in order.
> [N]o one has provided evidence it is insufficient or incorrect.
Please do not summon MiniMax, BartR.
A pile of unsubstantiated assertions about what Nordhaus is supposed to have said about Lomborg’s statements. Each assertion needs to be substantiated or withdrawn. Without substantiation I will assume they are all Bart R’s assertions, not Nordhaus’s criticisms of Lomborg’s statements
My prediction came two minutes too late.
Peter Lang | April 25, 2013 at 8:26 am |
Substantiated on previous thread, and confirmed in that thread by people who actually do the requisite reading. Therefore, unless you can substantiate a counterargument to a specific point, your arbitrary case does not merit withdrawal.
Now, I could point out that I’m hardly the first to observe errors in Lomborg’s writings. It’s practically an industry unto itself in Denmark and online, from smaller efforts such as Kåre Fog’s (in my view obsessive-compulsive and slightly webstalkingly creepy) http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/EconomicModels.htm and up.
Now, I’m not arguing that Nordhaus is right about all things, but when Nordhaus explicitly points to specific errors in Lomborg’s use of Nordhaus’ own tools, we can agree that’s a pretty authoritative opinion, as it’s the opinion of the author of the tool.
I get that this is distressing to you, and why. Lomborg’s assertion that there is net benefit from AGW (until after we all expect to be dead) absent catastrophic change is very convenient if you rely on it. All you then have to do is argue against CAGW and accept that you’re the sort of person who would willingly steal from future unborn generations for present luxury.
But Lomborg is simply wrong. Cost Benefit Analysis requires fundamental characteristics of a system to be valid, and the global climate plus global energy economy supersystem simply lacks these characteristics. It is unbounded. All it’s inputs and outputs are not well-priced. It contains externalities. All it’s inputs and outputs cannot be enumerated. There is no homogeniety of prices. Cost Benefit Analysis could never succeed on such a system.
The best guess of total benefits vs. total costs among those who believe they can capture anything like a meaningful outcome is that we have never seen net benefit of AGW, and the equation is steadily trending to the negative.
But why focus on my criticisms, when http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/Hot_its_not08.pdf has other, more widely-known critiques?
Since Bart R does not have the integrity to admit he made a whole host of unsubstantiated assertions about what he claims Nordhaus said about Lomborg’s statements, and doesn’t have the integritity to withdraw his baseless assertions and admit he made it all up, he has proved one again what he is made of – a load of BS.
Peter Lang | April 25, 2013 at 6:43 pm |
The first time you asked for substantiation, it was provided. You ask for substantiation of the same argument as if the prior never happened.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/the-forest-2006-climate-sensitivity-study-and-misprocessing-of-data-an-update/#comment-311069
One suggests “integrity” is a word you may wish to call attention to less often.
To help you out, let’s point out what Nordhaus said that substantiates my claims:
..6.
A final point concerns economic analysis. The sixteen scientists argue, citing my research, that economics does not support policies to slow climate change in the next half-century:
A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
On this point, I do not need to reconstruct how climate scientists made their projections, or review the persecution of Soviet geneticists. I did the research and wrote the book on which they base their statement. The skeptics’ summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results.
The first problem is an elementary mistake in economic analysis. The authors cite the “benefit-to-cost ratio” to support their argument. Elementary cost-benefit and business economics teach that this is an incorrect criterion for selecting investments or policies. The appropriate criterion for decisions in this context is net benefits (that is, the difference between, and not the ratio of, benefits and costs).
This point can be seen in a simple example, which would apply in the case of investments to slow climate change. Suppose we were thinking about two policies. Policy A has a small investment in abatement of CO2 emissions. It costs relatively little (say $1 billion) but has substantial benefits (say $10 billion), for a net benefit of $9 billion. Now compare this with a very effective and larger investment, Policy B. This second investment costs more (say $10 billion) but has substantial benefits (say $50 billion), for a net benefit of $40 billion. B is preferable because it has higher net benefits ($40 billion for B as compared with $9 for A), but A has a higher benefit-cost ratio (a ratio of 10 for A as compared with 5 for B). This example shows why we should, in designing the most effective policies, look at benefits minus costs, not benefits divided by costs.
This leads to the second point, which is that the authors summarize my results incorrectly. My research shows that there are indeed substantial net benefits from acting now rather than waiting fifty years. A look at Table 5-1 in my study A Question of Balance (2008) shows that the cost of waiting fifty years to begin reducing CO2 emissions is $2.3 trillion in 2005 prices. If we bring that number to today’s economy and prices, the loss from waiting is $4.1 trillion. Wars have been started over smaller sums.10
My study is just one of many economic studies showing that economic efficiency would point to the need to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions right now, and not to wait for a half-century. Waiting is not only economically costly, but will also make the transition much more costly when it eventually takes place. Current economic studies also suggest that the most efficient policy is to raise the cost of CO2 emissions substantially, either through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes, to provide appropriate incentives for businesses and households to move to low-carbon activities.
One might argue that there are many uncertainties here, and we should wait until the uncertainties are resolved. Yes, there are many uncertainties. That does not imply that action should be delayed. Indeed, my experience in studying this subject for many years is that we have discovered more puzzles and greater uncertainties as researchers dig deeper into the field. There are continuing major questions about the future of the great ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica; the thawing of vast deposits of frozen methane; changes in the circulation patterns of the North Atlantic; the potential for runaway warming; and the impacts of ocean carbonization and acidification. Moreover, our economic models have great difficulties incorporating these major geophysical changes and their impacts in a reliable manner. Policies implemented today serve as a hedge against unsuspected future dangers that suddenly emerge to threaten our economies or environment. So, if anything, the uncertainties would point to a more rather than less forceful policy—and one starting sooner rather than later—to slow climate change.
The group of sixteen scientists argues that we should avoid alarm about climate change. I am equally concerned by those who allege that we will incur economic catastrophes if we take steps to slow climate change. The claim that cap-and-trade legislation or carbon taxes would be ruinous or disastrous to our societies does not stand up to serious economic analysis..
– Wm. Nordhaus, Feb. 22, 2012.
Please, by all means illustrate how this passage from a much longer Nordhaus missive does not substantiate so much of what I said as to satisfy your craving for citation. Be specific. Be particular.
And I will furnish further substantiation, so far as is practical.
You had the opportunity before to question and address this citation, but chose then to ignore it. I took at that time silence to imply assent. How could I do otherwise?
Bart R,
Still twisting turning, avoiding, obfuscating, misleading and resorting to straightout dishonesty. You have made a pile of unsubstantiated assertions about what you claim Nordhaus has said about Lomborg’s statements. Nordhaus said no such thing. You are disengenuous, or more plainly you demonstrate a lack of integrity.
And I notice you provide a link to this junk web site which demonstrates the sort of complete rubbish you apparently rely on to inform your opinions: http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/EconomicModels.htm . Anyone can see that it is complete and utter rubbish written by someone with an agenda and an axe to grind (perhaps a Greenpeace or WWF activist). The fact you rely on it demonstrates the sort of nonsense you believe and trust. It shows you are driven by an ideological agenda, are gullible, and incapable of objective analysis.
From now on your comments can be interpreted on the basis of these revelations (not that most CE regulars didn’t already know this).
Peter Lang | April 26, 2013 at 11:36 pm |
You really don’t know the story behind the Kåre Fog website and the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty? (I did warn that it was obsessively webstalkingly creepy, did I not?)
Dr. Kåre Fog is perhaps Denmark’s foremost expert in the formation of humus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humus) and dwellers therein, and since 1998 has tracked the exploits of Dr. Lomborg so assiduously and critically as to practically qualify as Denmark’s leading expert in that subject, too. I don’t claim to understand Danish academia or its nuances, but I believe Dr. Fog et al does not approve of Dr. Lomborg et al.. in much the way Hamlet did not approve of Claudius.
However, the criticisms posted at Tufts by Ackerman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ackerman) is less easy to dismiss with a Shakespearan allusion. Unless you have something against progressive Economics, or the Stockholm School.
Which leaves us with Nordhaus himself and his cited writing, which you twistingly devise to avoid.
I said Nordhaus criticised Lomborg’s approach, which he did, as Lomborg’s approach is the same as the approach of others Nordhaus criticised in Feb. 2012. See, I’m about the ideas, not the people. I don’t think Nordhaus, like Fog, has a weird Danish personal grudge against Lomborg, and I don’t really care if he does: Nordhaus speaks to the ideas Lomborg uses, and that’s all that matters.
If the two approaches differ in any substantive way, please, by all means clarify.
Bart R
Where: Please provide a link to where Nordhaus said that, or retract your statement.
I doubt you have the integrity to do so.
If you don’t it strongly suggests you are devious, dishonest and cannot be trusted. Typical of many of the CAGW doomsayers.
Peter Lang | April 27, 2013 at 12:13 am |
Asked and answered. Again. And again. And again. And again.
You keep strawmanishly replacing what I actually said with what you wish I’d said.
Let’s compare:
What I said: Dr. Nordhaus has specifically, pointedly and emphatically asserted in public that Dr. Lomborg’s use of DICE is incorrect, that the claims of current net benefits are completely false, and that Dr. Lomborg is attempting to apply principles of cost-benefit analyses with inappropriate tools. (http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315561)
What you say I said: ..what you claim Nordhaus has said about Lomborg’s statements.. (http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316273)
Look at the full, unadorned, unambiguous statement I really made. Note I refer not to Dr. Lomborg’s statements or any statement of Dr. Nordhaus about a statement of Dr. Lomborg per se, but (a) Lomborg’s use of DICE (which is identical to the usage Dr. Nordhaus criticized others for in Feb. 2012); I refer not to Dr. Nordhaus’ statements directly about Dr. Lomborg’s statements, but (b) Lomborg’s claims of current net benefits, which Dr. Nordhaus ably dismantles when he dismantles those like or dependent claims of others in Feb. 2012. Not I refer not to any imagined or real statement of Dr. Nordhaus citing one of Dr. Lomborg’s statements, but to (c) Lomborg’s attempted application of principles of CBA with inappropriate tools — Dr. Nordhaus’ tools, which Dr. Nordhaus in Feb. 2012 amply clarified when he clarified that the same application was wrong in the hands of others.
Unless you have a specific argument that somehow (a), (b), or (c) in the hands of Dr. Lomborg are substantively different from (a), (b), or (c) in the hands of sixteen other scientists, then all you have done is waste my time and defamed me. Again. And again. And again.
> You have made a pile of unsubstantiated assertions about what you claim Nordhaus has said about Lomborg’s statements.
Please remind your readers of these so-called “unsubstantiated assertions”, Peter Lang. Show us you can read along the way.
Huffing and puffing does you no good.
Willard,
In response to your question Bart R said above:
Thanks, Peter Lang.
That’s one.
I want the whole pile
Please continue.
Remember: the whole pile.
[Repost to correct formatting:]
Willard,
In response to your question Bart R said above:
c1. Dr. Nordhaus has specifically, pointedly and emphatically asserted in public that Dr. Lomborg’s use of DICE is incorrect,
Nordhaus said nothing of the sort. Bart R has been asked repeatedly to provide a link to substantiate his claim. He has not done so. Clearly he just made it up then did not have the integrity to withdraw and admit he made it up. He lied. He continues to lie. By extension we can conclude he habitually lies.
[Repost to correct formatting:]
Willard,
In response to your question Bart R said above:
Nordhaus said nothing of the sort. Bart R has been asked repeatedly to provide a link to substantiate his claim. He has not done so. Clearly he just made it up then did not have the integrity to withdraw and admit he made it up. He lied. He continues to lie. By extension we can conclude he habitually lies.
Peter Lang | April 27, 2013 at 1:03 am |
As you’ve added nothing but more repetition:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316295
Willard,
When dealing with dodgy, dishonest people it’s best to deal with one at a time. So we’ll get a retraction and apology for lying for the first one first or leave it at that. That is sufficient evidence he is a liar, and by extension many of the CAGW alarmists/doomsayers that act similarly, support this sort of dishonest behaviour and don’t call out their mates for their dishonesty are also dishonest and cannot be trusted. It’s where the CAGW Alarmists have got to. Their case has collapsed and they are left clutching at straw and having to lie and mislead to try to get followers to stick with them. If he does admit he misrepresented and try to sleeze his way out out of it, then we can move onto the next ( if I can be bothered dealing with such dishonest people, which probably I cannot).
willard (@nevaudit) | April 27, 2013 at 1:03 am |
It took me a while to decipher what all the frothing was about, else I’d have clarified more, earlier.
Who could imagine Peter Lang was hoping for me to establish Nordhaus’ time-travel abilities by having me furnish evidence that Lomborg’s March 2013 statements which were in flagrant disagreement with Nordhaus’ Feb. 2012 statements were the direct subject of Nordhaus’ Feb. 2012 letter?
Peter Lang | April 27, 2013 at 1:13 am |
As you’ve again added nothing but mere repetition:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316312
Peter Lang,
I agree with you:
> When dealing with dodgy, dishonest people it’s best to deal with one at a time.
This is why I want to focus on the first claim you made, and repeated over and over again, without ever substantiating it.
Your claim refers to a pile. I want to see the pile first. Then we’ll look into the pile.
Handwaving does not help your defaming.
Many thanks!
willard (@nevaudit) | April 27, 2013 at 9:02 am |
σωρίτης
Bart R,
It’s worse than that. Peter Lang proposes to hand wave to one claim and generalize to your overall contributions, your person, and warmists. Over and over and over again.
This is not the first time Peter Lang does that:
> Intentionally misleading, Dishonest. […] Is that a fair indication of your lack of professional and personal integrity? Given previous interactions I believe it is.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/#comment-276381
(Search for “misleading” and “dishonest”. You can also search for Vaughan’s Pratt synopsis of Peter Lang’s contributions on another Bat channel.)
***
More to the point, see how Peter Lang’s tone changes when he discusses with Richard Tol:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/20/copenhagen-consensus-2012/#comment-201862
Not that interacting with Tol seems to diminish his incredibilism [1].
I note your discussion of a neutral carbon tax in that thread, which might be interesting considering the contrarianism against this idea, one year later at Judy’s.
***
Having to repeat over and over again the same arguments about the same claptraps go way beyond Sorites’ paradoxes. If we don’t keep note of these discussions, not only we will have to do all the work for these lazy epistemologists, but we will have to do this over and over again.
Not unlike Σίσυφος.
[1] http://planet3.org/2012/08/24/incredibilism/
This is about integrity. Who do you believe? Who c an you trust?
Bart R posted a comment with many unsubstantiated assertions attacking Lomborg here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315561
I asked for substantiation for the assertions or withdrawal here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315656
Bart R then posted a number of comments in which he avoided avoid addressing the issue (the request for substantiation of his assertions, obfuscating, misrepresenting..
So, to try to get him to substantiate the first assertion first. He wouldn’t do that and continued with obfuscation, avoidance, misrepresentation.
Then Willard joined in to defend his comrade using the diversionary tactic of asking what is the pile of unsubstantiated comments and wants an answer to that before the substantiation for the first unsubstantiated assertion is addressed. Willard said: “Thanks, Peter Lang. That’s one. I want the whole pile. Please continue. Remember: the whole pile.” This is an example of the sort of devious and dishonest tricks and game playing the CAGW doom-sayers have stooped to. They were probably always like this, but it is really becoming exposed now.
So as not to leave Willard’s request for the ‘pile of Bart R’s unsubstantiated assertions’ unanswered, here it is (capitals are mine)
Sorry, repost with fixed formatting:
This is about integrity. Who do you believe? Who can you trust?
Bart R posted a comment with many unsubstantiated assertions attacking Lomborg here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315561
I asked for substantiation for the assertions or withdrawal here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315656
Bart R then posted a number of comments in which he avoided avoid addressing the issue (the request for substantiation of his assertions, obfuscating, misrepresenting..
So, to try to get him to substantiate the first assertion first. He wouldn’t do that and continued with obfuscation, avoidance, misrepresentation.
Then Willard joined in to defend his comrade using the diversionary tactic of asking what is the pile of unsubstantiated comments and wants an answer to that before the substantiation for the first unsubstantiated assertion is addressed. Willard said: “Thanks, Peter Lang. That’s one. I want the whole pile. Please continue. Remember: the whole pile.” This is an example of the sort of devious and dishonest tricks and game playing the CAGW doom-sayers have stooped to. They were probably always like this, but it is really becoming exposed now.
So as not to leave Willard’s request for the ‘pile of Bart R’s unsubstantiated assertions’ unanswered, here it is (capitals are mine)
What a rant. And how disreputable to then try to defend it instead of withdrawing it an admitting it was just a release of bile.
What is worse is that the dishonesty of Bart R and then Willard’s support. They tried to defend the indefensible. They are not the only ones that practice seriously dishonest behaviour in trying to defend their beliefs in their doomsday cult. It has become common practice by the CAGW doomsayers to misrepresent, to obfuscate, to avoid answering direct questions with direct honest answers and to try to defend indefensible behaviour. I interpret it as an indication of how the whole CAGW religion is dying.
I never cease being amazed at how unethical and dishonest are many of the people defending the CAGW doomsayer belief.
Peter Lang again resorts to Chewbacca’s bag of tricks:
> Bart R then posted a number of comments in which he avoided avoid addressing the issue (the request for substantiation of his assertions, obfuscating, misrepresenting..
This is unsubstantiated.
Worse than that, this is arm waving, i.e. we have no idea to what exactly does refer Peter Lang.
Even worse than that, considering Peter Lang’s newly found “pile”, reading Bart R’s comments show this is false.
***
Peter Lang decided to make this about integrity.
So be it.
INTEGRITY ™ — Damn Due Diligence.
Willard,
I gave you what you asked for – i.e the ‘pile of unsubstantiated assertions in Bart R’s comment’
Why don’t you say:
“thank you, done; now I understand what you were referring to and now, I agree, Bart R should substantiate all of them or withdraw them. I agree with you, Peter Lang, for a start he should at least try to substantiate the first one or withdraw it and admit it was his personal opinion, not something Nordhaus said about Lomborg’s work”.
How about that Willard?
Before paying due diligence to Peter Lang’s accusation, we should make distinguish these two accusations:
(1) Your claim is unsubstantiated.
(2) Your claim can’t be substantiated.
The first claim can be hold while the second can be false.
In other words, (2) does not follow from (1).
***
Saying something like:
(3) You are trying to defend the indefensible.
looks a lot more like (2) than like (1).
Since all Peter Lang has so far for (2) is (1), his latest comments where he claims (2) amount to a non sequitur.
QED.
***
Peter Lang’s claim that we are defending the indefensible is substantiated.
A correction:
> Peter Lang’s claim that we are defending the indefensible is not substantiated.
Some thanks:
We thank Peter Lang for having made the effort to identify what the hell he was talking about, i.e. Bart R’s claims to which he takes objections.
***
Peter Lang does seem to take objection to these claims, since he asserted they are indefensible.
We will reiterate that Peter Lang has yet to substantiate his accusation that Bart R’s claims are indefensible.
I Google searched for the phrasing in Bart R’s post and here is a link with the full text by Nordhaus.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/?pagination=false
Now is time to pay due diligence to Peter Lang’s accusation.
First, we will note this interesting bit of generalization:
> It has become common practice by the CAGW doomsayers to misrepresent, to obfuscate, to avoid answering direct questions […]
Notwithstanding the bilious editorial content, we note the accusation:
(Answering Direct Question) Bart R avoided answering direct questions.
This has not been substantiated.
In fact, this can’t be disproved:
(P1) Peter Lang accused Bart R of having proffered a pile of unsubstantiated claims without identifying them.
(P2) Peter Lang just recently identified the specific pile he had in mind [n1].
(P3) Peter Lang identified only one claim.
(P4) Bart R substantiated that claim [n2].
Here’s the sketch
From (P1) and (P2) follows that Peter Lang has not asked a direct question.
From (P3) and (P4) follows that Bart R can answer direct questions when he’s being asked one.
This should be enough to prove that (Answering Direct Question) is false.
QED.
***
We thank again Peter Lang for finally having identified the claims he considers indefensible.
***
[n1] ALL THE CLAIMS!
[n2] Whether Bart R’s substantiation holds true or not is irrelevant to the fact that he did substantiate.
peter.
it’s pretty simple. Bart made it appear as though he might be making claims about what Nordhaus said about Lomborg. This is a very sharp game but a game nonetheless.
Nordhaus made no statements about Lomborg per se.
Let’s just do a little example so you see what you are up against.
Peter: you fry eggs by putting them in a frying pan.
Willard: I fried eggs like Peter said, by putting them in a freezer.
Peter: People who fry eggs by putting them in freezers got my instructions wrong.
Bart: Peter has specifically, pointedly and emphatically asserted in public that Willard’s use of his egg frying instructions is incorrect
########################
really?
So, how do you assess that? Here is how I assess that. Bart made it appear to the casual reader that he had evidence where Nordhaus would specifically call out Lomborg, by name. Now, the words don’t say that, but your reaction implies you believed that to be his meaning. That’s a simple misuderstanding and Bart could have cleared it up, but there was more fun to be had by not making it clear and simple.
There was a similar incident where a statistician called out the procedures that Michaal Mann used, procedures he had invented, and the Mann defenders argued that Mann wasnt called out by name.. as if that makes a difference.
Depending on the situation people will parse as they see fit. you can’t stop it.
Peter Lang | April 27, 2013 at 8:25 pm |
The tendentious are so tedious. But not everyone who is tedious is tendentious.
This is about integrity. Who do you believe? Who can you trust?
We’re skeptics on the Interwebs. If any of us believes the say-so or authority of another of us, we’ve failed the test of skepticism. If any of us trusts the word of another, we’ve let them down because skeptics should want to have their words independently verified, tested, checked, and validated or invalidated.
What good is skepticism if it ever becomes about belief and trust?
No, belief and trust is the stuff of tribes.
I really don’t want to belong to any tribe that would want me; and I certainly don’t condone forming tribes to subvert skepticism.
This is one of the reasons, this preserving the value of skepticism about ideas, therefore value of the ideas we exchange, that I so affirm anonymity where practical.
It’s not always practical: in so many cases the body of work of an individual has bearing on understanding their work.
Doesn’t make me want to believe or trust them more, but it can mean I can put what they say in one place in a larger context.. and none of it is about integrity, except the integrity of the ideas.
So if Peter is ill at ease because he thinks I seek his trust or belief in me personally, he can rest easy. I don’t care if he trusts or believes in me personally, and I thank him for checking my ideas for validity and verity.
I merely wish he were more competent about the process; ittook days to finally discover most of this is based on a misreading by Peter of what I wrote earlier on.
For every point that Peter Lang specifically asked for substantiation, I thought I specifically provided it.
He asked I substantiate my remarks (or, as he characterizes them, ‘attacks’) on Dr. Lomborg’s ideas, even though scant weeks ago I had already provided him this substantiation in another context.
And I pointed this out.
And I suggested other, better sources of reading to better put Dr. Lomborg’s position into context.. which Peter characterizes as avoidance, obfuscation and misrepresentation.6
Tch. Trying to be helpful, I found no good deed goes unpunished; were I aware Peter had misunderstood what I said in the first place, had he merely said he misunderstood, we would have saved so much time.
However, I remain perfectly happy to address Peter Lang’s hostile and malicious grilling with so reasoned and straightforward answers as I have, in the interest of finding out if he might have anything of value to contribute to the world of ideas. Let’s start by expanding his arduous numbering system to see if that helps with clarity.
1. (a) Dr. Nordhaus has specifically, pointedly and emphatically asserted in public that Dr. Lomborg’s use of DICE is incorrect, (UNSUBSTANTIATED) that (b) the claims of current net benefits are completely false, and that (c) Dr. Lomborg is attempting to apply principles of cost-benefit analyses with inappropriate tools (UNSUBSTANTIATED). (d) As Dr. Nordhaus crafted the tools, one would hope Dr. Lomborg has by now made appropriate adjustments to his notes and won’t be in the position of committing scientific fraud (UNSUBSTANTIATED) (Economics is still a science, right?) in front of a committee of Congress.
2. (a) Dr. Lomborg’s remarks about carbon tax are wildly inaccurate (UNSUBSTANTIATED). (b) We have seen the exact opposite of what he asserts wherever carbon taxes have been implemented (UNSUBSTANTIATED), and (c) Dr. Lomborg ought, as a Dr. of Public Administration, know this. Further, (d) Dr. Lomborg specifically excludes from his examination the most relevant models of pricing carbon (BIASED PERSONAL OPINION), (e) those currently being studied by lawmakers in the USA, of fee and dividend (NOT TAKEN SERIOUSLY), which (f) will have all the benefits these notes say do not exist (UNSUBSTANTIATED), and (g) not a single one of the drawbacks (UNSUBSTANTIATED). (h) One is certain Dr. Lomborg would want a chance to correct these mistakes before speaking in the morning.
3. Dr. Lomborg’s managed-economy conclusions might apply to a tiny state like Cuba or Denmark with a long history of Communism or Socialism and a taste for tyrannical control of all decisions by a politburo, but for America, one must believe the values enshrined in the US Constitution would make his recommendations antithetical. Also, (a) they’re by far the most expensive and least effectual proposals anyone has seriously set forward (UNSUBSTANTIATED). One hopes Dr. Lomborg does not commit this faux pas.
One notes the inconsistency, if Peter Lang is not taking 2.e seriously then why does he continue on to seek substantiation of the subordinate clauses of 2.e: 2.f & 2.g?
What a rant. And how disreputable to then try to defend it instead of withdrawing it an admitting it was just a release of bile.
Really? Peter Lang surely misses the irony of this potkettling, at this point, as surely no one who has gone so far as he off the track of modesty, humility, honesty, proportionality, and courtesy could with full self-awareness accuse anyone else, ever, of a rant, much less of a disreputable one, or of a release of bile, either.
So, 1.(a):
Substantiated by Dr. Nordhaus’ reply to sixteen scientists, which I provided links to. Repeatedly.
The use of DICE in Lomborg’s book is the use of DICE of the sixteen scientists. Peter Lang apparently meant that he read my remarks to mean that between Dr. Lomborg’s publication in March of 2013 and my post, Dr. Nordhaus read Dr. Lomborg’s remarks, invented time travel, went back to Feb. 2012.
Someone help me out if I misunderstood Peter’s point on this.
1.(b) Wow. Peter Lang takes this remark of mine at face value, of all the things I said? I’ve got to believe he means to mingle this remark with 1.(c), or merely missed it.
However, Dr. Nordhaus’ remarks (linked to previously in this thread) substantiate 1.(b).
1.(c) Same substantiation as 1.(a) and 1.(b).
Someone help me out if I misunderstood Peter’s point on this.
1.(d) REALLY? Peter Lang doubts Dr. William Nordhaus is the author of DICE? Seriously?
Someone help me out if I misunderstood Peter’s point on this.
2. (a) Hey. It’s true, I hadn’t substantiated this remark, because Peter Lang never mentioned he had an issue with it.
What, Peter believes I’ve never mentioned carbon tax before on Climate Etc.?
Someone help me out if I misunderstood Peter’s point on this.
2.(b) substantiates 2.(a).
2.(c) Though Peter Lang doesn’t question this, I actually got this point wrong, as my Persian Flaw. Dr. Lomborg is a PhD of the Science of Danish Politics. Now, I don’t know what the Science of Danish Politics entails, so I can’t guess what one ought know, but Dr. Lomborg’s undergraduate studies included Public Administration, according to wikipedia. Any undergraduate in Public Administration ought be able to understand what Dr. Lomborg misses.
2.(d) Personal biased opinion? So, Peter Lang does know I have mentioned carbon tax before on Climate Etc., and that I have longwindedly and at great length substantiated carbon taxes (substantiating 2.(a&b)), including frequent links to informative primary sources, and a two-hour-long presentation available by clicking on my name.
Someone help me out if I misunderstood Peter’s point on this.
2.(e-f-g). Do up your seatbelt. Click on my name. Spend two hours reading the substantiation.
Someone help me out if I misunderstood Peter’s point on this.
3. (a). Come off it: do nothing to address the carbon deficit for at least two decades, while spending huge amounts on pie-in-the-sky government research projects _isn’t_ the most expensive alternative?
It turns out I do actually approve of Dr. Lomborg’s proposal at least in part: during his testimony, Dr. Lomborg advised doing away with costly and ineffectual current subsidies (though he limited his list of subsidies only to those on alternatives, and could have generated far more savings by including oil and gas subsidies) to find the funds to pay for the costly and ineffectual government research pet projects.
Someone help me out if I misunderstood Peter’s point on this.
Another correction:
> In fact, this can’t be
disprovedsubstantiated, as it can be refuted:***
Another untruth:
> That’s a simple misuderstanding and Bart could have cleared it up […]
This assumes that Bart R has not tried to clear that up.
Here’s what Bart R said:
> I said Nordhaus criticised Lomborg’s approach, which he did, as Lomborg’s approach is the same as the approach of others Nordhaus criticised in Feb. 2012. See, I’m about the ideas, not the people.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316286
April 26, 2013 at 11:59 pm.
***
This clearly shows that Bart R tried to cut the same deal with Peter Lang as Moshpit is trying to do.
Peter Lang might be well advised to take Moshpit’s hint and cut his losses.
INTEGRITY ™ — Maybe It Was Just a Misunderstanding.
We thank again Peter Lang for identifying what the hell he had in mind, and for having double dared.
Steven Mosher | April 27, 2013 at 9:53 pm |
You credit me with far more cleverness and stomach for mayhem than I really have.
Well, at least the cleverness.
I honestly never considered the reading of my comments as ‘Nordhaus addressed Lomborg thus’.
For me, it really was just and only about the ideas.
I admit now I ought have been quicker to realize what you so clearly see.
Steven Mosher,
Thank you for incisive wrap up.
I am still amazed at how intelligent people, probably academics, can play word games like this about issues they claim are so important.
Regarding Willard’s comment:
Peter Lang decided to make this about integrity.
So be it.
INTEGRITY ™ — Damn Due Diligence.
My eyes rolled. How can you do due diligence on a ‘seller’ who is dishonest. You cannot. You just have to turn away and go elsewhere.
Bart R,
Here are the claims as I see it:
(1) Dr. Nordhaus already rejected Dr. Lomborg’s use of DICE as incorrect.
(2) Dr. Nordhaus already rejected Dr. Lomborg’s claims about current net benefits as completely false
(3) Dr. Nordhaus already rejected Dr. Lomborg’s attempt to apply principles of cost-benefit analyses as inappropriate.
(4) Dr. Lomborg should have known better than disregarding Dr. Nordhaus’ rejections.
(5) Dr. Lomborg’s remarks about carbon tax are inaccurate by a large margin.
(6) Dr. Lomborg’s remarks about carbon taxes have been refuted by practice.
(7) Dr. Lomborg’s analysis excludes the most relevant models of pricing carbon, i.e. those about fee and dividend, which have benefits Dr. Lomborg ignores and none of the drawback Dr. Lomborg emphasizes.
(8) Dr. Lomborg’s recommendations are by far the most expensive and least effectual proposals anyone has seriously set forward for America.
Corrections welcome.
Jim D,
Yes. I am well across that discussion as three comments I posted on SkepticalScience in response to Dana1981’s post demonstrate: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82373
However, the point to note is that Nordhaus is not addressing this to Lomborg. Bart R said:
So the link to NYRB you posted does not support Bart R’s statement. It is irrelevant. Bart R cannot substantiate his assertion because it is a lie.
willard (@nevaudit) | April 27, 2013 at 10:21 pm |
Corrections:
(1) Dr. Nordhaus in Feb. 2012 rejected the same use of DICE as Dr. Lomborg makes as incorrect.
(2) Dr. Nordhaus in Feb. 2012 rejected claims about current net benefits the same as Dr. Lomborg makes as completely false.
(3) Dr. Nordhaus in Feb. 2012 already rejected an attempt like Dr. Lomborg’s to apply principles of cost-benefit analyses as inappropriate.
(Now, it may be that the sixteen scientists directly depended on Dr. Lomborg’s earlier works, or not, and by implication Dr. Nordhaus’ comments on the sixteen extend indirectly to Dr. Lomborg too.. but I just don’t have anything to add to that.)
(4) Dr. Lomborg should have known about Dr. Nordhaus’ well-publicized remarks, and considering the similarities in uses, claims and principles Dr. Lomborg used to those Dr. Nordhaus criticized, would have clarified much if he’d at least acknowledged this issue in some way.
Points 5-8 are close enough that I have no quibble with them.
And thank you for taking the effort to clarify.
Bart R,
Most welcome.
I hope you do appreciate why I linked to Peter Lang’s conversation with Vaughan Pratt. It seems all he will soon have left is his trademark trick of repeating ‘dishonest’ ad lib. In the most unsubstantiated manner.
εἰρωνεία eirōneía.
willard (@nevaudit) | April 27, 2013 at 11:03 pm |
I thank you for the help clarifying for me where I went wrong.
I ought have realized I’d been unintentionally ambiguous, from the point of view of someone who believes in time travel.
As for the Vaughan Pratt/Peter Lang thing.. I’m sorry. Were I a better man, I’d care enough about people to follow up on what they say to whom and why and when, but I’m not a better man, and if it isn’t about an idea I’m examining, it will likely not catch my attention.
Peter Lang | April 27, 2013 at 10:29 pm |
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question
And I understand you’ve been mean to Vaughan Pratt in some way.. which honestly, I can’t be bothered to follow the links to or look into the details of.
I do hope you’ll be courteous enough to apologize to Dr. Pratt, as he’s contributed a great deal of value to Climate Etc.
“I honestly never considered the reading of my comments as ‘Nordhaus addressed Lomborg thus’
Seriously? I spent about two hours looking for where Nordhaus had mentioned Lomborg by name. Given the “colligiality” of academics and scientists I found your claim incredible. Because I thought it was incredible and because my past experience with you suggests that you rarely get things wrong, I was rather baffled why I could not find any source for your claim. So, I just started reading everything I could find.
Then it occurred to me when I found the editorial.
It would be much easier if these guys just got into public pissing contests.. Like that Dufus who called Judith out in a congressional hearing..
Did you note how he didnt send her an private note asking her to clarify her testimony but he just farted in front of Congress?
Where were FOMD and Willard with their ettiquette book?
dunno.. sphynx like those cats
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSiGo8XadoXm7kjk1qJzHgVB1Ht2wZQgDB5xsi22ys7LIeKLHx5JQ
For good measures, let’s add this other comment by Bart R:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316295
April 27, 2013 at 12:30 am
Our emphasis.
***
Here are the next comments by Peter Lang:
> Nordhaus said nothing of the sort.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316305
> When dealing with dodgy, dishonest people it’s best to deal with one at a time.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316314
***
Let’s note the next comment from Bart R:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316315
***
The claim that Peter Lang might have missed Bart R’s clarifications does not seem substantiated.
Nor what we read now can substantiate this other claim that immediately follows Bart R’s clarifications:
> Bart R then posted a number of comments in which he avoided avoid addressing the issue (the request for substantiation of his assertions, obfuscating, misrepresenting..
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316643
***
We thank Peter Lang for the transparency of his trickery.
Steven Mosher | April 27, 2013 at 11:18 pm |
You make excellent points, and I am sorry to have inconvenienced yourself, or any readers, who encountered the same problems from my materials.
I generally hope the problems people have with my materials to be more along the lines of growing pains from reaching out to discover and understand new ideas.
About the testimony, the kindest way I can put it: Dr. Lomborg came off best, and Dr. Curry was only somewhat less than her usual, due obviously to the cold she was suffering.. and they were the better two of three very inadequately prepared witnesses from the reactions of the committee to the performance of all three.
About academic pissing contests, circumlocution is very usual. But if it’s a matter of reading between the lines, I’m of the opinion that Nordhaus meant ‘Lomborg’ every time he said ‘sixteen’, under point 6 of his editorial remarks, but Nordhaus knows better than to pick a public fight with Lomborg.
Before we follow up on our due diligence tomorrow, let’s compare and contrast some quotes, since we have the one-click mean to unwrap Dr. Lomborg’s PDF, which others might not have.
***
1. Here’s a quote Nordhaus first read from an “opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal of January 27, 2012” by the Sweet Sixteen:
> A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
Here’s a quote from Dr. Lomborg’s recent testimony:
Some arguments made by the Sweet Sixteen can be read in Dr. Lomborg’s testimony, a testimony auditors should wonder if it was made under oath.
***
2. Here’s another one from Dr. Lomborg:
Figure 6 is this title: Reduction in CO2 emissions and its consequent reduction in temperature.
It refers to Nordhaus’ DICE model.
Here’s a quote from Dr. Nordhaus:
> My research shows that there are indeed substantial net benefits from acting now rather than waiting fifty years.
***
3. Another quote from Dr. Lomborg’s testimony:
An accompanying quote from Dr. Nordhaus:
> Current economic studies also suggest that the most efficient policy is to raise the cost of CO2 emissions substantially, either through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes, to provide appropriate incentives for businesses and households to move to low-carbon activities.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
***
We thank Peter Lang for everything.
Peter –
It seems that maybe you would consider it rather off point – but I was just curious if instead of focusing so much of your energy on telling readers what you think of the honesty and integrity of someone you’ve never met, you might instead comment on Lomborg’s misuse of Nordhous’s tools?
Wouldn’t you expect that someone of Lomborg’s stature would be accurate on such matters, or at least correct his errors when they are pointed out?
Joshua,
I am confident Lomborg is accurate with what he says, and has not misled Congress. How rediculous to suggest such.
But how interesting that you, another doomsayer, piles in to support Bart R and Willard, unquestioningly believing their attempts to justify their misrepresentations. The misrepresentations continue throughout their attempted defense, but I realise there is no point in pointing that out. It’d be a complete waste of time. No honest analysis or debate is possible.
Also, as I’ve pointed out before e.g. on SkepticalScience here http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82373 and many times on CE, Nordhaus’s support for carbon pricing is not consistent with his own statements about the assumptions that underpin his modelling. They are academic and cannot be achieved in the real world. More on that here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/19/open-thread-weekend-14/#comment-313509 and http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/19/open-thread-weekend-14/#comment-313514.
Peter –
I will point out that you cannot site one example, provide one single excerpt, of any comment I have ever made here at Climate Etc., which matches your description.
At any rate, if you’d ever like to get around to it, I would find it more interesting to see you address the substance of Bart’s points w/r/t Lomborg’s errors than to read you characterize, over and over, the honesty and integrity of someone you’ve never met.
I can’t help but wonder why you avoid the issue of substance and instead pontificate about something for which you have no real evidence.
But hey – you’re entitled.
Joshua,
Wonder away. I understand the tactics of diversion. First acknowledge that Bar R misrepresented Nordhaus and Lomborg. Nordhaus did not make the statements about Lomborg’s work that Bart R stated and then spent ages trying to weasel out of his lie, instead of fixing it and acknowledging his error. Clear that up to my satisfaction first, then we can deal with the diversion you and the others would like to diver to.
Peter Lang,
Having endured the painful process of reading throug this sub-thread to see what’s what, I must sadly inform you that it is you who are in most significant error.
I grant you this – Bart did express himself with some degree of grammatical ambiguity that could lead one to assume that Bart meant what you thought he meant, re: …” asserted in public that Dr. Lomborg’s use…”.
However, this was explained, quite reasonably, as said grammer issue, and Bart and others have shown that Nordhaus did say and mean what Bart said he did.
You could have left it at that and emerged with your honour intact……however you chose the path of the 2 yr old having a massive tanty. Having, not unreasonably, grabbed the shiney lolly so enticingly placed at the supermarket checkout, and ignoring all reasonable entreates to relinquish the desired item, we are now at the stage of you holding your breath till you turn blue in the face.
Michael,
How good of you to provide your totally objective and impartial assesment.
Gentlemen,
Peter Lang’s claim:
> Nordhaus said nothing of the sort [that Dr. Lomborg’s use of DICE was wrong].
has not been substantiated.
It clearly follows multiple efforts by Bart R to clarify what he meant.
Dr. Nordhaus’ op-ed shows this claim to be false if we agree that Dr. Lomborg used a similar reconstruction of his work than the Sweet Sixteen did in their 2012 op-ed.
Do Bart R and Peter Lang agree that Dr. Lomborg used a similar reconstruction of Dr. Nordhaus’ work than the Sweet Sixteen?
***
Peter Lang’s following claim:
> Bart R has been asked repeatedly to provide a link to substantiate his claim.
would need to be substantiated.
I emphasize the repeatedly.
Unless Peter Lang can substantiate that he asked “repeatedly to provide a link”, I’d like him to retract his claim and apologize.
***
Speaking of links, here’s a quote Peter Lang with the word “link”:
> Anyone can see that it is complete and utter rubbish written by someone with an agenda and an axe to grind.
This claim has not been substantiated.
Peter Lang should at least substantiate what he means by “having an axe to grind”. A set of objective and recognizable criteria would be nice. This might prove handy.
Willard,
How twisted is your logic. Bart R made the unsubstantiated assertions. I asked for substantiation. He has not done so and cannot do so. His elaborate attempt to justify his statement is bogus. He has not justified his assertions. They are clearly wrong. His claims that Lomborg misled Congress are also wrong.
I’m keeping my powder dry on your misunderstandings or misrepresentations where you tried to link statements in Lomborg’s presentation to the NYRB’s debate between Nordhaus and the wise sixteen. We can get to that once the four CAGW Alarmist who have appeared so far acknoweldge their misrepresentations and withdraw their unsubstantiated assertions.
Peter Lang armwaves again:
> Bart R made the unsubstantiated assertions. I asked for substantiation. He has not done so and cannot do so.
We emphasize the switch from what is to what can be, the basic step in the fallacy fallacy.
***
Peter Lang pads his armwaving by repeating this unsubstantiated claim:
> His elaborate attempt to justify his statement is bogus. He has not justified his assertions.
We can clearly see that Bart R did substantiate his assertions, e.g.:
> (a) Lomborg’s use of DICE (which is identical to the usage Dr. Nordhaus criticized others for in Feb. 2012); I refer not to Dr. Nordhaus’ statements directly about Dr. Lomborg’s statements, but (b) Lomborg’s claims of current net benefits, which Dr. Nordhaus ably dismantles when he dismantles those like or dependent claims of others in Feb. 2012. Not I refer not to any imagined or real statement of Dr. Nordhaus citing one of Dr. Lomborg’s statements, but to (c) Lomborg’s attempted application of principles of CBA with inappropriate tools — Dr. Nordhaus’ tools, which Dr. Nordhaus in Feb. 2012 amply clarified when he clarified that the same application was wrong in the hands of others.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316295
***
Bart R also reminded Peter Lang of Nordhaus’ op-ed by linking to a discussion they had two weeks ago:
> Lomborg (and others) have it wrong, as Nordhaus explicitly reminds repeatedly and on many occasions.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/the-forest-2006-climate-sensitivity-study-and-misprocessing-of-data-an-update/#comment-311069
Peter Lang’s armwaving in that other discussion would deserve due diligence. Suffice to say for now that Peter Lang already knew where Bart R stood on this issue. The hypothesis that Peter Lang misread Bart R is less and less plausible.
***
We thank Peter Lang for keeping his secret powder dry. He has so little he should take good care of it.
willard (@nevaudit) | April 28, 2013 at 11:23 am |
Are you suggesting, or rather implying, that Peter Lang’s conduct is not accidental and not misreading of an unlikely ambiguity, but purposefully contrived and cynically planned?
That Peter Lang’s uses of fallacy and the techniques of propaganda, from name-calling to glittering generalities, repetition of a Big Lie, and on and on as seen throughout the thread are calculated to achieve an objective, as opposed to simply the mistakes of someone who can’t read?
That this technique of Peter Lang’s to obscure discourse and obfuscate fact in support of an agenda is something he repeats time and again, on my own ideas, on Dr. Vaughan Pratt’s ideas, on any ideas that he finds profit in suppressing?
Are you documenting this cynical Black Hat Marketing ploy you have concluded Peter Lang is conducting upon the denizens of Climate Etc.?
FWIW –
I think that Peter believes his argument to be valid, and that he believes that it would be convincing to an objective observer of the debate – just as is true for anyone else in this debate (such as it is – not much is really being debated, IMO).
I doubt that he is intending to “obscure discourse” or “obfuscate fact” any more than anyone else here I would suggest that seeing him in that light would be no more (nor less) accurate than his similar arguments about attempts to “divert” or “misrepresent,” or his conclusions about the integrity and/or honesty of people he’s never met.
My guess is that Peter’s arguments in this thread are nothing more or less than testimony to the power of motivated reasoning – where we can see that intelligent and knowledgeable people are so invested in confirming their preconceptions that they don’t allow logic and reason to stand in their path. Even someone as interested in policy questions as Peter obviously is, will focus on arguing trivialities and unsupportable assertions rather than focus on substantive debate.
Same ol’ same ol’.
Bart R,
Showing that Peter Lang armwaves unsubstantiated accusations thread after thread suffices. There’s not much else he could reply, at this time of the exchange. Unless, of course, he was bound by the INTEGRITY ™ he put himself on the table.
We could wonder about Peter Lang’s lack of INTEGRITY ™. But as far as I am concerned, his recurring armwaving speaks for itself. See how this works.
First, demands that we do all the work for him.
Second, verbal abuses to motivate that we do all the work for him.
Third, baseless rejections of ALL THE WORK.
Fourth, gloating about his favorite pet peeves.
Fifth, rinse and repeat, using his buzz words of the moment.
***
I think the most “active ingredient” to notice in Peter Lang’s armwaving is how it remains quite indefinite. See for instance:
> Bart R made the unsubstantiated assertions. I asked for substantiation. He has not done so and cannot do so. His elaborate attempt to justify his statement is bogus. He has not justified his assertions. They are clearly wrong.
No quotes, no links, no arguments, no logic, nothing useful. Just a spirited choice of abusive words forming unsubstantiated accusations. Unsubstantiated accusations that can easily be proven false, and oftentimes already proven false.
Pure, vigorous arm waving. Just like Chewbacca would do.
***
There is no need to inquire about what motivates this speech pattern.
What matters is the speech pattern itself.
Keeping note of this speech pattern suffices.
Res ipsa loquitur.
A hell of a lot of motivated reasoning by the CAGW doomsayer comrades in this exchange.
But still no substantiation has been forthcoming for the pile of unsubstantiated assertions in Bar R’s first post and a lot more added since.
In what way has Lomborg misled Congress? Please be succinct and specific.
I say he did not and you’ve got it wrong. But I don’t understand why you reckon he did. You may disagree with him, but that is your opinion, it does not demonstrate he misled Congress or said anything wrong. I suggest you have applied your own motivated reasoning to such an extreme extent that you may believe what you (the four CAGW doomsayer comrades) are saying, or you may be trying to mislead others who haven’t the patience to look critically at the bogus and contorted arguments you have presented. Joshua fell for it and believed what Bart R and Willard said without looking carefully at it (or if he did he chose to gloss over and ignore the bogus arguments). That demonstrates his motivated reasoning. Michael the same. I haven’t had a discussion with Willard before. I now realise he is an extremist and no amount of dishonesty twisting and distortion is too much as far as he is concerned if it assists him to propagate his beliefs.
The motivated reasoning you four have employed here is an excellent example of just how dishonest are many of the people who support the CAGW alarmist movement. No wonder the general population is becoming far more skeptical about your beliefs.
[Sorry again, Repost to fix the formatting, again]
A hell of a lot of motivated reasoning by the CAGW doomsayer comrades in this exchange.
But still no substantiation has been forthcoming for the pile of unsubstantiated assertions in Bar R’s first post and a lot more added since.
In what way has Lomborg misled Congress? Please be succinct and specific.
I say he did not and you’ve got it wrong. But I don’t understand why you reckon he did. You may disagree with him, but that is your opinion, it does not demonstrate he misled Congress or said anything wrong. I suggest you have applied your own motivated reasoning to such an extreme extent that you may believe what you (the four CAGW doomsayer comrades) are saying, or you may be trying to mislead others who haven’t the patience to look critically at the bogus and contorted arguments you have presented. Joshua fell for it and believed what Bart R and Willard said without looking carefully at it (or if he did he chose to gloss over and ignore the bogus arguments). That demonstrates his motivated reasoning. Michael the same. I haven’t had a discussion with Willard before. I now realise he is an extremist and no amount of dishonesty twisting and distortion is too much as far as he is concerned if it assists him to propagate his beliefs.
The motivated reasoning you four have employed here is an excellent example of just how dishonest are many of the people who support the CAGW alarmist movement. No wonder the general population is becoming far more skeptical about your beliefs.
We thank Peter Lang for wasting his magic powder arguing by assertion:
> Still no substantiation has been forthcoming for the pile of unsubstantiated assertions in Bar R’s first post[.]
Pointing to this comment alone:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316677
should be enough to show that this reiteration has no merit.
We thank Peter Lang’s for his rawhide of demands, verbal abuses, and huffs and puffs, even if they don’t compensate his silence on the fact that he got caught, in this sub-thread alone: committing the fallacy fallacy over and over again; insisting on misreading Bart R’s claim over and over again; stating outright falsities (see the latest above) over and over again; armwaving over and over again; and for not showing any INTEGRITY ™ whatsoever in yet another villainous monologue.
His overall performance reminds us Deaf Vader:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3lScCvnkEQ
for which we will ever be thankful.
***
Readers might now have a better idea why MattStat says in an epic thread:
> Peter Lang is the tar baby.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/#comment-283276
For more about Tar Baby, please refer to Vaughan’s synopsis:
> Perhaps someone can help me here, but I’ve been unable to find a single thread where Lang did not apply at least one of the epithets in the impressive list attributed to him by Stephen Gloor back in 2010: […] This has been Lang’s modus operandi on every thread I’ve encountered him on, where he’s systematically applied such epithets to those disagreeing with him.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/#comment-282156
***
Speaking of that thread, here’s my first encounter with Tar Baby:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/#comment-282028
This contradicts his claim that:
> I [Tar Baby] haven’t had a discussion with Willard before.
***
Succinctly, Tar Baby should acknowledge that Bart R has substantiated his position before considering if Dr. Lomborg has “misled the Congress”, if only to prevent some eventual pea and thimble game.
Speaking of misleading, Tar Baby should find a specific quote instead of putting words into Bart R’s mouth.
In what way has Lomborg misled Congress. Please be succinct and specific.
Please substantiate the claim that:
> Anyone can see that it [lomborg-errors.dk] is complete and utter rubbish written by someone with an agenda and an axe to grind […]
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316273
starting with an intersubjective criteria that determines what it is to have “an axe to grind”.
Bart R,
@ April 28, 2013 at 9:39 pm
I have only just seen your comment @ April 28, 2013 at 9:39 pm It is posted in the wrong part of the tree.
I mean provide links to substantiate your assertions, starting with the first in which you said:
That statement is not true and despite repeated requests for you to substantiate it you have not done so. If it was true it would be easy for you to quote the exact words from Nordhaus to Lomborg and to provide a link to the source. That is the substantiation I am looking for.
You may think your long wandering arguments attempting to justify your belief are substantiation, but they are not. Your attempt to link Nordhaus’s criticism of the Wise Sixteen does not back up your assertion.
The above is the main point. That is what needs to be addressed. So I am not avoiding your questions, I’ll answer them, but I won t play that game any more, because I find it another tactic to mislead anyone following this discussion – you’ve buried your own agenda, assertions and the equivalent of push-polling in your questions. So I am looking for your answer to the top part, not a discussion about the answers to the questions.
Answers to your questions:
Q1. Yes
Q2. Yes. Professor Nordhaus says that to the Sixteen, not to Lomborg and I do not understand why you assert it applies to Lomborg. (I am not making trivial points. The Rebuttal is not relevant to Nordhaus’s presentation to Congress. I’d suggest you consider this carefully, because I think you are making an error (which I attribute to your motivated reasoning in trying to find fault with Lomborg’s careful and IMO correct testimony).
Q3. Yes. They are not relevant to Lomborg’s testimony. If you think they are it is up to you to demonstrate it, not come back and ask me why they are not.
No. Of course Lomborg is fully aware of the debate between Noredhaus and Lomborg. Nordhaus and Lomborg and Tol discuss the economics of climate change, DICE, RICE and FUND frequently. They respect each other and collaborate. They are in tune, although sometimes disagree and sometimes misrepresent others work, then discuss it as professionals and sort it out. One retracts, and work goes on. Lomborg fully understands and has said nothing in his written or oral testimony to Congress that is wrong, as far as I know.
Steven Mosher,
@ April 27, 2013 at 10:13 pm
I have only just seen your comment. It is not in the part of the thread where I get notification of comments.
The statement is not correct. The last sentence is based on wrong premise
I’d suggest you concern about improving your own notions and controlling ego instead of trying to advise others on what to say, how and when.
On April 25, 2013 at 10:20 am Bart R’s cites Ackermann’s criticism:
> But why focus on my criticisms, when http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/Hot_its_not08.pdf has other, more widely-known critiques?
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315671
On April 26, 2013 at 11:36 pm, Baby Tar rants against http://lomborg-errors.dk :
> And I notice you provide a link to this junk web site which demonstrates the sort of complete rubbish you apparently rely on to inform your opinions […]
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316273
On April 26, 2013 at 11:06 pm Bart R refers to a previous comment made on April 12, 2013 at 12:39 am:
> The first time you asked for substantiation, it was provided. You ask for substantiation of the same argument as if the prior never happened. http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/the-forest-2006-climate-sensitivity-study-and-misprocessing-of-data-an-update/#comment-311069 One suggests “integrity” is a word you may wish to call attention to less often.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316264
***
Tar Baby should acknowledge that:
(A1) his substantiation demands in this thread come more than two weeks after being provided of a link to Nordhaus’ op-ed.
(A2) his rant against http://lomborg-errors.dk ignored both Ackermann’s criticisms and Nordhaus’ criticisms;
(A3) he has yet to substantiate his criteria for “having an axe to grind”.
***
As a basis for (A3), I suggest we analyze (A1) and (A2).
On April 25, 2013 at 10:20 am, Bart R’s cites Ackermann’s criticism:
> But why focus on my criticisms, when [Ackermann] has other, more widely-known critiques?
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315671
On April 25, 2013 at 6:43 pm, Tar Baby epilogues:
> Since Bart R does not have the integrity […] unsubstantiated assertions […] doesn’t have the integritity […] baseless assertions […] he made it all up […] he is made of – a load of BS.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315843
On April 26, 2013 at 11:06 pm Bart R refers to a previous comment made on April 12, 2013 at 12:39 am:
> The first time you asked for substantiation, it was provided. You ask for substantiation of the same argument as if the prior never happened. [See the link in the original comment.] One suggests “integrity” is a word you may wish to call attention to less often.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316264
On April 26, 2013 at 11:36 pm, Baby Tar rants against lomborg-errors :
> And I notice you provide a link to this junk web site which demonstrates the sort of complete rubbish you apparently rely on to inform your opinions […]
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316273
***
Tar Baby should acknowledge that:
(A1) his substantiation demands in this thread come more than two weeks after being provided of a link to Nordhaus’ op-ed.
(A2) his rant against http://lomborg-errors.dk ignored both Ackermann’s criticisms and Nordhaus’ criticisms;
(A3) he has yet to substantiate his criteria for “having an axe to grind”.
***
As a basis for (A3), I suggest we analyze (A1) and (A2).
Peter Lang | April 29, 2013 at 9:20 am |
Yay! Progress. We’re now at the point, with the participation of four additional commenters where we might have gotten to three days ago, halfway to understanding what’s gone wrong in this communication.
Peter knows about, understands, and appreciates that Dr. Lomborg and Dr. Nordhaus frequently communicate and have disagreements about some unspecified portion of this general topic. I know and appreciate that not everything Dr. Lomborg says is fully in disagreement with much of what Dr. Nordhaus says.
I claim much of what Dr. Nordhaus has said in public, in a well-publicized way, is pointedly relevant to the matter of Dr. Lomborg’s written testimony to the committee of Congress in question, which Dr. Lomborg took the open, tranparent, and salutory measure of publicly posting before he appeared. Peter claims that this relevancy has not been substantiated.
Bart R | April 25, 2013 at 12:11 am | (the original post in this thread):
..economic models show that the overall impact of a moderate warming (1–‐2oC) will be beneficial whereas higher temperatures expected towards the end of the century will have a negative net impact. Thus, as indicated in Figure 1, global warming is a net benefit now and will likely stay so till about 2070..
This citation from Dr. Lomborg’s written testimony cannot other than refer to Dr. Nordhaus’ economic models. We can find this discussed at length in Dr. Lomborg’s book and other writings.
I say that Dr. Lomborg’s ..use of DICE is incorrect, that the claims of current net benefits are completely false, and .. attempting to apply principles of cost-benefit analyses with inappropriate tools, and that Dr. Nordhaus has said these things about just such use, claims, and attempts in “The Rebuttal”, which Peter Lang agrees is well known, though he appears to disagree is relevant to Dr. Lomborg’s uses, claims and attempts.
The best substantiation of my remarks pertaining Nordhaus in the original post (which are all covered in point 1 there), I feel, is to actually read “The Rebuttal” (cited in this thread, and in a previous discussion with Peter a few weeks ago), at least from its point six to the end, and compare with Dr. Lomborg’s written notes of his testimony. If you don’t see the relevancy of the one to the other, I accept your personal judgement that you read it differently than did I. I expect most would see the relevancy, however.
Both other academics in the testimony took pains to meet this standard of acknowledging where there were disagreements with their own claims.
I believe it would behoove, by the reasonable person test, an academic with Dr. Lomborg’s circumstances to at the very least acknowledge Dr. Nordhaus’ position on the topic differs from his own while making his testimony.
Bart R,
@ April 29, 2013 at 10:10 am
You begin in your usual arrogant way, assuming you are correct. Pity about that. A less conceited approach might be better when you risk being wrong. Your opening paragraph:
First, we would have sorted out any ‘communication problem’ immediately if you or any of your comrades had given a direct, straight answer to my direct, straight, simple question. Second, pity you didn’t acknowledge you’d posted the comment I responded to in the wrong place on the thread. Third, your four comrades share your motivated reasoning. They are not objective. They all want to believe you, they want you to be correct and they swallowed your connection of dots that do not connect. They support you but do not show you are correct. It is a case of motivated reasoning, group think and herd mentality.
There is progress at my end. I now recognise you believe that Lomborg has misled Congress and that he has misrepresented Nordhaus and DICE results. But he has not. I’ll say that again, so please pay attention and take appropriate action to challenge your beliefs, to think critically about what you are saying. The fact that someone of Lomborg’s stature (one of the 100 most influential people, was stated in the Congress opening address) would give written testimony to Congress and not change it if there was an error, should give you sufficient pause to be very self-critical and cautious abour what you are saying. After all he has a valuable reputation to maintain, whereas you are a nobody (as are your comrades and me of course).
Now let’s tease the issue along a little further. You say:
WRONG! It is your motivated reasoning that leads you to that conclusion.
That is why I asked you repeatedly to answer this question:
You have avoided answering the question, directly, succinctly and specifically, every time I’ve asked it. You’ve gone into a long contorted argument to try to justify your original (unsubstantiated) assertion, but have not answered the question. If you had tried, it should dawn on you that you cannot.
The evidence of your motivated reasoning is throughout your comments. For exampled, you are derogatory about the ‘Sixteen Scientists’ (you called them the ‘Sweet Sixteen’) and about Lomborg (attempting to disparage his qualifications implying they are insignificant or irrelevant to the role he plays and his testimony to Congress). You are generally disparaging to experts that do not support your beliefs in CAGW. All this demonstrates your motivated reasoning. The fact that Joshua and Michael jumped in to support you without thinking critically and being appropriately sceptical demonstrates their motivated reasoning.
Therefore, all in all, the fact that you and your comrades agree with you is simply an example of the motivated reasoning, group-think and heard-mentality that is so common amongst the CAGW alarmists, true believers and doomsayers (which all of you have demonstrated repeatedly is the case).
You have provided an excellent demonstration of the motivated reasoning Joshua calls out sceptics on so often.
How embarrassing for all of you and Joshua especially.
What fun it will be to see your responses.
Peter Lang | April 29, 2013 at 8:35 pm |
You begin in your usual arrogant way, assuming you are correct.
Does this sermon even make sense? Did I say, “Assume I am correct,” or words to that effect?
I acknowledged there was a failure to communicate — which more and more I suspect there wasn’t; that I give you too much credit for honestly expressing what you believe (and I ought take the opposite approach, and assume going forward that you are cynically manipulating readers for your own advantage) — which most would agree is a neutral statement that doesn’t blame anyone in particular, or assume either party in the failed communication to be correct.
First, we would have sorted out any ‘communication problem’ immediately if you or any of your comrades had given a direct, straight answer to my direct, straight, simple question.
The facts are amply against you, as any reader with the fortitude to endure the mind-numbing contents of our discussion (in three topics, across almost a month) and follow the various links would be able to attest to from the evidence contained in our mutual statements, and the various remarks of various interlocutors.
On the assumption that you are merely cynically manipulating readers, this is hardly a surprise. You divert attention from reasonable or face-saving alternatives to inflate your Big Lie and toss in some tribal propaganda and devil words, while denying facts plainly in evidence. This is a more parsimonious, simple, universal and accurate explanation than the one that goes, “Peter Lang is really that bad at reading, yet can read and report to a high level when motivated, by magic.”
Second, pity you didn’t acknowledge you’d posted the comment I responded to in the wrong place on the thread.
Huh. That seemed self-evident. Did you need grovelling for every typo, misthreading or grammatical error? Wow. That recommends you seek professional help. Really.
Unless one resorts to the hypothesis that this is just more cyncial manipulation, where Peter Lang seeks to inflate every imagined slight to inflate his propaganda.
Third, your four comrades share your motivated reasoning. They are not objective. They all want to believe you, they want you to be correct and they swallowed your connection of dots that do not connect. They support you but do not show you are correct. It is a case of motivated reasoning, group think and herd mentality.
Sorry. That won’t wash. I take no responsibility for the writings of others. I don’t know any of them personally, nor more about them than a scant and inattentive skim of parts of some of what they write here might afford. That scant skim informs me that they are not in full accord with my positions, and let’s face it, I don’t want me to be correct, and I can’t imagine they do, either.
Because if I were correct, then we’ve all fallen afoul of a cynically manipulative, malicious webstalker who will do his utmost to make the lives of his victims miserable.
Who would want to be correct about that?
Though it’s hard to deny the present evidence wherein you propagandize with name-calling, tribalism, glittering generalities, denial of facts patently available that grows more insistent the more obvious the facts grow.
There is progress at my end. I now recognise you believe that Lomborg has misled Congress and that he has misrepresented Nordhaus and DICE results.
That’s really all the progress I’m interested in. I could care less how you address counter-arguments to the plentiful evidence substantiating my claims, now that you acknowledge the claims have enough substantiation to be believed.
Let’s face it, you’re just not interesting enough to engage on your counterarguments.
So you can peddle your cynical manipulation elsewhere.
You’ve acknowledge your original error, and withdrawn it, however reluctantly and ill-disposed.
Why would I put myself or anyone through more of this than that?
And here is where the experiment draws to a test of the hypothesis: at this point, does Peter Lang continue as he has done, rehashing and embellishing his propaganda ad infinitum, or does he drop it and move on, as any reasonable person might?
Bart R,
More avoidance or acknowledging your error. More twisting and waving. How unethical you are:
This is your statement that reveals your wrong assumption that you built your whole belief on
This is so important I must correct the formatting :)
Bart R,
More avoidance or acknowledging your error. More twisting and waving. How unethical you are:
This is your statement that reveals your wrong assumption that you built your whole
belief on
DONG! WRONG!
It is your motivated reasoning that lead you to that false conclusion. And it is wrong!!
QED
Case Closed!
But I will continue to point it out from now on because it is an excellent example of the motivated reasoning so common amongst the CAGW doomsayers, and your demonstrated your reluctance to admit (to clearly state) you are wrong – clearly wrong – is an excellent example of your lack of integrity and lack of ethical values.
The fact that several other CAGW doomsayers joined in supporting your belief, which was a result of motivated reasoning, is an indication of how widespread motivated reasoning is amongst the CAGW doomsayers.
Bart R, Joshua, Michael and Moron have demonstrated (in the comments above on this sub thread) they are highly competent at motivated reasoning.
Would it be fair to go further and conclude Bart R, Joshua, Michael and Moron have demonstrated they are experts in the application of motivated reasoning?
> [P]ity you didn’t acknowledge you’d posted the comment I responded to in the wrong place on the thread.
There’s not much as new information in that misplaced comment than Tar Baby seems to presume here.
Tar Baby’s best trick is to tar, not to seek a way out with technicalities.
If he insists in playing at the clerical level, his numerous untruths might very well play against him.
Bart R,
I take the liberty to post your questions in the proper subthread, to make sure Tar Baby does not try to get away another time:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-317036
Not that we should not expect such behavior.
INTEGRITY ™ – I Shot the Cleric
“And here is where the experiment draws to a test of the hypothesis: at this point, does Peter Lang continue as he has done, rehashing and embellishing his propaganda ad infinitum, or does he drop it and move on, as any reasonable person might?”
You would think that he would simply aknowledge the common enough misunderstanding about what bart wrote, no biggy, and move on to the real issue.
Does Nordy misrepresent his own work? or less contentiously Peter could move on to the discussion of net benefits versus cost to benefits ratios. Nordy’s work pretty much crumbles, as Held has shown, when you look at perturbing the ECS variable, that is when you look at decision making under uncertainity.
Now to the answers. Tar Baby acknowledges that Dr. Nordhaus is the author of his own op-ed, that Dr. Nordhaus wrote in that op-ed:
> I did the research and wrote the book on which they base their statement. The skeptics’ summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results.
and that he cannot conceive of any way a competent witness testifying to Congress on this matter could be unaware of Dr. Nordhaus’ well-publicized &c.
That means we can dismiss 1, 2, and 4. Only #3 remains:
Tar Baby turns to his inner Deaf Vader:
> Yes. They are not relevant to Lomborg’s testimony. If you think they are it is up to you to demonstrate it, not come back and ask me why they are not.
It is not up to Bart R to substantiate Tar Baby’s claim that Dr. Nordhaus’ criticisms are “not relevant”.
Tar Baby made an unstantiated assertion. Since Tar Baby does not have the integrity to admit this central claim about the relevance of Nordhaus’ criticisms of the Sweet Sixteen’s use of his model, and doesn’t have the integritity to withdraw his baseless assertion and admit he made it all up, Baby has proved once again what he is made of — tar. [1]
***
In any case, the disagreement centers around this question:
> Do Bart R and Peter Lang agree that Dr. Lomborg used a similar reconstruction of Dr. Nordhaus’ work than the Sweet Sixteen?
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-316772
Vintage April 28, 2013 at 5:26 am.
One can a lot of words just by reading.
***
[1] http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315843
Mosher,
I’ll start with responding to your comment:
No way. This is far too important and far too much fun, clearly displaying the disreputable tactics, morals and motivation of the four CAGW doomsayers are.
Also, it is not as if you, Joshua, Bart R or Willard (Moron) ever let something go until you have milked every last possibility for insult and abuse from it. So I am making sure you and anyone else reading this realise the extent to which the four comrades – Bart R, Josuha, Michael and Willard (Moron) and perhaps you too – are driven by your ideological beliefs, motivated reasoning, and a lack of integrity.
There’s far too much value in pursuing and exposing this example of how the CAGW doomsayers behave and what motivates them to let it go, at least until they have retracted their statements, justifications and apologised for their abuse. Oh what fun! :)
Also, there is some good stuff yet to come! :)
There is no misunderstanding no matter how Bart R and his comrades try to wriggle out of it and try to make out there was a misunderstanding. That’s just making a bigger lie to try to cover up for the initial stupidity. There was no misunderstanding. What Bart R said is as a plain and clear as it could be:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315561
Much later he said:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-317157
Which demonstrates, clearly, the false assumption he based his ridiculous assertions on.
It is his (and his comrades’) motivated reasoning that led him to that false conclusion. And Motivated reasoning led the comrades to support Bart R’s false assertions without hesitation.
A clear case of MOTIVATED REASONING by the expert practitioners of Motivated Reasoning.
Followed by a clear case of lack of integrity displayed by trying to justify their false assertions, instead of recognising and admitting to all their sins. Oh how evil!!
Oh what fun!
And Bart R and his comrades have continued to try to defend the initial blunder instead of admit he and they are full of BS. Bart R has not retracted his assertions admitted he was wrong, admitted his reasoning is controlled by his ideological beliefs, admitted he is gullible, admitted he is rude and abusive (as are the others and you, so that is why I am enjoying this so much). The assertions are wrong! He made a baseless assumption and went over the top with his assertions instead of softly discussing his contention and interpretation.
How gullible to think Lomborg would mislead Congress in his written testimony (released weeks before the presentation), that if he had made a mistake he would not have corrected his written testimony before the hearing and made a point of saying so.
How gullible is Bart R and the comrades. Or is his motivation more sinister. I suspect the latter!
How disgustingly disreputable is he and his comrades.
Willard (Moron)
I’ve already answered all these already, Moron!
If you were trying to clarify you would have followed your repost of Bart R’s questions with my responses. But you did not. Which strongly suggest your motivations are less than honest. I’d suggest they are ideological and dishonest.
Willard (Moron)
<Now to the answers. Tar Baby acknowledges that Dr. Nordhaus is the author of his own op-ed, that Dr. Nordhaus wrote in that op-ed:
[Repost to correct formatting again, sorry]
Willard (Moron)
How dense are you, Moron?
The extract from Lomborg’s testimony that Bart R hung his case on – Bart R wrongly assumed Lomborg was referring to Nordhaus’s work – was not referring to Nordhaus’s work.
Try and keep up, Moron?
Tar Baby made this unsubstantiated claim:
> Yes. They [the Nordhaus’ criticisms of the Sweet Sixteen] are not relevant to Lomborg’s testimony.
It is up to noone but Tar Baby to substantiate that claim about the relevance of Nordhaus’ criticisms of the Sweet Sixteen’s use of his model to Lomborg’s testimony.
We already provided Tar Baby with the relevant quotes.
Unless Tar Baby has the integrity to substantiate this central claim, or have the integritity to withdraw his assertion and admit he made it all up, Tar Baby will prove once again what he is made of — tar.
Tar Baby channels his inner Deaf Vader:
> If you were trying to clarify you would have followed your repost of Bart R’s questions with my responses.
The questions were posted April 30, 2013 at 11:19 am
> I take the liberty to post your questions in the proper subthread, to make sure Tar Baby does not try to get away another time:
The answers were posted April 30, 2013 at 12:43 pm
> Now to the answers.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-317472
Let Deaf Vader wonder what I was doing during this hour. He could also refuse to hear the only question that matters right now, which is how Tar Baby will substantiate that
> [The Nordhaus’ criticisms of the Sweet Sixteen] are not relevant to Lomborg’s testimony.
Moron (Willard),
Brilliant. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity. Thank you for asking, sucker. Oh what fun. :)
Bart R and comrades (Joshua, Michael, Moron and apparently Mosher too),
Since this wonderfully enjoyable exposure of your motivated reasoning and lack of integrity cannot go on forever, perhaps it is time to reveal how I led you on while knowing all along your error. Bart R had made wrong assumptions, and the rest of you backed him up without looking carefully because he said what you wanted to hear. Your error was caused by your ‘Motivated Reasoning’. Bart R exposed his false assumption when he said:
This citation from Dr. Lomborg’s written testimony cannot other than refer to Dr. Nordhaus’ economic models.
I was confident I was correct and decided to make an issue of it and string you arrogant fools along for a while to demonstrate to others how you operate.
The reason I was confident is that Bjorn Lomborg had an article in The Australian on 8 April. On 13 April I wrote to him:
Professor Lomborg replied on 15 April and provided a reference to the source, Richard Tol 2010: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/cccTolPaper.pdf
That is why I was confident from the start that Bart R and his comrades had it wrong.
But they are apparently too arrogant and lack the common decency, let alone professional or intellectual integrity, to admit they were wrong.
What fun it has been exposing you CAGW doomsayers and ‘Motivated Reasoning’ experts.
If you fail to acknowledge your error, I will continue to post links back to relevant comments, when appropriate, to demonstrate your motivated reasoning, lack of integrity and lack of ethical values.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/cccTolPaper.pdf
References, p34
Nordhaus, W.D. (1991), ‘To Slow or Not to Slow: The Economics of the Greenhouse Effect’, Economic Journal, 101, (444), 920-937.
Nordhaus, W.D. (1993), ‘Rolling the ‘DICE’: An Optimal Transition Path for
Controlling Greenhouse Gases’, Resource and Energy Economics, 15, (1), 27-50.
Nordhaus, W.D. (1994a), ‘Expert Opinion on Climate Change’, American Scientist, 82, (1), 45-51.
Nordhaus, W.D. (1994b), Managing the Global Commons: The Economics of Climate Change The MIT Press, Cambridge.
Nordhaus, W.D. (2006), ‘Geography and Macroeconomics: New Data and New Findings’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 103, (10), 3510-3517.
Nordhaus, W.D. and J.G.Boyer (2000), Warming the World: Economic Models of Global Warming The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts – London, England.
Nordhaus, W.D. and Z.Yang (1996), ‘RICE: A Regional Dynamic General Equilibrium Model of Optimal Climate-Change Policy’, American Economic Review, 86, (4), 741-765.
In addition, if you trouble to look through the other references, you will find in a sizeable fraction of them — of those that refer to model-based cost-benefit analyses, similar reliance on Nordhaus.
Tol as an intermediate source does not make Nordhaus less authoritative on matters where Tol relies on Nordhaus in ways Nordhaus has specifically gainsaid, in public.
I get how difficult it was for Steven Mosher to spend over two hours tracking down Dr. Nordhaus’ writings. I’ve spent easily a hundred times that in reading Nordhaus over the decades. And he’s a relatively minor Economist, all said. And Economics is a fairly minor area of my reading interest. So when I make statements about Nordhaus and Economics, it comes from far deeper sources than a tweet to a Danish political science professor and a glossy pamphlet founded on elementary error.
So your testimonial as to how expert and erudite your unshakeable certainty is amounts not to a hill of beans.
Nice. Now my turn:
1. Here’s a quote from Lomborg’s testimony, with our emphases:
http://www.lomborg.com/sites/default/files/Congress_testimony_April_2013_3.pdf
2. On the very next page, we see figure 6. Its title: Reduction in CO2 emissions and its consequent reduction in temperature [6].
3. The number “[6]” refers to this, p. 14:
Nordhaus. DICE model, 2001.
4. In his op-ed against the Sweet Sixteen’s, Nordhaus said:
> My research shows that there are indeed substantial net benefits from acting now rather than waiting fifty years.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
5. Evidence #1-#4, which substantiates Bart R’s claim, have been laid out April 28, 2013 at 12:04 am:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/24/congressional-hearing-rescheduled-2/#comment-315561
6. Tar Baby’s claim that Dr. Nordhaus’ criticisms under point six in “The Rebuttal” are irrelevant to Lomborg’s testimony has been proven false.
QED.
***
All that remains to be settled for this first issue is if Dr. Lomborg’s “what matters is not necessarily to cut a lot now, but to make sure we can cut a lot in the long run” is compatible with Dr. Nordhaus’ interpretation of his work. But whatever its meaning, Nordhaus’ criticisms of the Sweet Sixteen’s rendering of his own research is relevant.
Let’s remind Tar Baby that there are at least two other issues raised by Bart R. We’ll let him do a bit of reading to find them. To be sport, and to take into account his reading skill, we’ll give him this hint: Bart R’s FIRST COMMENT ON THIS TOPIC CONTAINS THREE POINTS, which we finally broke down to eight.
We thank Tar Baby for enjoying himself.
I have to say – this may be the single longest
handbag fightsub-thread in the history of Climate Etc.A clarification:
When I said “nice”, I was referring to Tar Baby’s comment, which I enjoyed reading.
We thank Tar Baby for the best villainous monologue in a long time.
Bart R,
It doesn’t matter what you would you assume. You are wrong. It doesn’t matter how many references you refer to you, have to refer to the relevant one for the bit you have tried to say was from Nordhaus, but actually is based on Tol.
You guys are a real \eye opener as to just how dishonest and how driven by your ideological beliefs are many CAGW doomsayers.
No wonder so many people are becoming more and more skeptical about your beliefs. The public does not need to understand the science. They can see they are being misled by people like you – dishonest, lacking integrity, eco-religious zealots.
Tar Baby should retract his claim that Dr. Nordhaus’ criticisms under point six in “The Rebuttal” are irrelevant to Lomborg’s testimony.
His unsubstantiated claim has been proven false.
Moron,’
You still haven’t caught up. It’s not about Nordhaus, Moron!!
Lomborg’s statement Bart R and the comrades have hung all your hopes and credibility on (and lost it) is based on Tol’s work, dummy!! Lomborg said so himself. (see page 6 and also look at Tol’s new book).
This thread should become the classic example of motivated reasoning. And guess what – it’s all been by the CAGW doomsayers – the very people who try to argue that those who do not believe the doomsayer’s beliefs are the ones practicing motivated reasoning. Well this has been an excellent case to demonstrate clearly who practices motivated reasoning (ie the CAGW alarmists, doomsayers, eco religious zealots.
What fun exposing the hypocracy, incompetence, lack of ethis, lack of integrity of you lot!! :)
> It doesn’t matter how many references you refer to you, have to refer to the relevant one for the bit you have tried to say was from Nordhaus, but actually is based on Tol.
As Deaf Vader might ask: “what?”
> It’s not about Nordhaus[.]
What?
Lomborg’s testimony does not need to about Nordhaus for Bart R’s claims to be substantiated.
Bart R’s claims (1)-(8) have been substantiated.
Tar Baby’s claim that Dr. Nordhaus’ criticisms under point six in “The Rebuttal” are irrelevant to Lomborg’s testimony have been proven false.
***
Besides:
Tar Baby’s claim that he asked for direct questions has been refuted.
Tar Baby’s claim that he asked repeatedly for a link has not been substantiated.
Tar Baby’s claim that this was our first conversation has been proven false.
Tar Baby’s claim that Bart R’s used the expression “Sweet Sixteen” has not been retracted yet.
Peter Lang | April 30, 2013 at 11:21 pm |
The same Tol who cited Nordhaus in the very pamphlet you provide as Lomborg’s source SEVEN times? That’s more than any other source Tol cited, and what’s more, many of Tol’s other sources cited Nordhaus in their cited works.
Moreover, the “Sweet Sixteen” from “The Rebuttal” also cited Tol, which means when Nordhaus identifies himself as the researcher and author of the work they depend on, either he is plagiarizing Tol — which Tol would have certainly protested vehemently — or he is setting the record straight as to Tol’s source.
See, it’s not that Lomborg or Tol or any of the Sixteen or even Nordhaus are involved. It’s that the ideas Lomborg used are so authoritatively discredited, in such an important way, that makes Lomborg’s continued use of them misleading, absent acknowledgement of the direct contradiction from the author of the foundation Lomborg rests his claims upon.
And even if Nordhaus had gone along and agreed with Lomborg’s use, that too wouldn’t matter: it’s an invalid use of an already marginal tool.
You just can’t make cost benefit analyses work on the whole world. It’s not plausible. It’s not practical. It’s not possible. The closest you can come, maybe, might be Nordhaus’ defensible use of a complex model to compare multiple approaches and declare which _within_the_model_ are winners or losers relative to each other.
To be valid, Cost Benefit Analyses require you can list all the costs — which you can’t — and all the benefits — which you can’t — and the benefits must be actual benefit, not sunny day benefits scenarios (which Nordhaus uses and Lomborg inflates) and the pricing of costs and benefits must be in some way commensurable (which they aren’t) and you must account for Externalities (which, as they’re all the Externalities in the world, is inconceivable) in some plausible way, and then you run into the same problem with models of complex systems that they do not do especially well in validation and verification.
All of which Nordhaus is aware of, and among the reasons why he gives such cautions. So no tweets from Lomborg or glossy pamphlets from Tol can paper over this elementary error. It’s insurmountable, except in a work of pure fiction. You’ve been had. You’re just that gullible, because you are so motivated to believe the crap you spout.
Moron (willard) said
Yes, Moron, Figure 6 is output from Nordhaus (DICE model). But Lomborg’s statement: It is important to realize that economic models show that the overall impact of a moderate warming (1-2oC) will be beneficial… is not. It refers to Figure 1, not Figure 6. Figure 1 is not from Nordhaus or DICE.
Lomborg’s statement, that moderate warming will be beneficial, refers to Figure 1. It is about net impacts (i.e. net benefits and costs). Figure 6 is about CO2 emissions and temperature, NOT net benefits-costs. Get the difference?
Lomborg’s statement that Bart R and you are trying to argue is a misrepresentation of Nordhaus’s work is not based on Nordhaus’s work; its not about Figure 6, its not even about temperature and CO2 concentrations, its about net costs and benefits. The complete quote is:
Bart R’s assertion was:
Bart’s “conclusion” is wrong.
Bart R explains how he reached his wrong assumption:
He made an assumption. He presumed Lomborg’s statement was based on Nordhaus and DICE. It was not. Bart R’s assumption was wrong.
DENIERS and Motovated Reasoning
Even after I explained that Lomborg himself has said Figure 1 is from Tols’ work, Bart R and the four comrades are still trying to argue he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and his Figure 1 is a misrepresentation of Nordhaus and DICE.
Can there be better evidence of DENIAL and Motivated Reasoning than Bart R, Joshua, Michael, Moron (willard) and it seems, Mosher too, have displayed on this defence of Bart R’s false assertion?
Bart R,
You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. Did you stop to think how weak is your argument if you have to resort to counting the number of references to try to justify your assertion?
Did you stop to think how irrelevant to your argument is the number of times an author is quoted?
What does it matter how many times Tol quoted Nordhaus or anyone else? The only thing relevant is the source for Lomborg’s statement: It is important to realize that economic models show that the overall impact of a moderate warming (1-2oC) will be beneficial… . This statement is not based on Nordhaus work, it’s based on Tol’s and others’ work and on the references quoted on page 6, and especially on Tol’s recent book.
Only an extreme case of motivated reasoning or an extreme zealot would deny the bleeding obvious and even deny it when the author, Lomborg, himself said it.
Bart R,
Do you recognise any similarity between Figure 1 in Lomborg’s testimony to Congress and Figure 7.3 (p107) in Richard Tol’s textbook Climate Economics: Economic analysis of climate, climate change, and climate policy.
https://sites.google.com/site/climateconomics/home
[Ref. p98 from Tol’s book.]
> Figure 6 is output from Nordhaus (DICE model).
Good. Now, let’s recall Lomborg’s quote:
Many people argue that global warming is so urgent that we need to cut carbon emissions now. However, the problem is that almost no matter what we do now, it will only have a measurable impact in the second half of this century, as is evident in Figure 6. This matters because many of the cuts that have been proposed are hard to sustain. Thus, what matters is not necessarily to cut a lot now, but to make sure we can cut a lot in the long run.
We emphasize the however to show that Lomborg is using Nordhaus’ DICE model to argue against the need to cut NOW.
We emphasize the measurable impact to show that Lomborg is using Nordhaus’ DICE model to argue for something more than temperature projections.
We emphasize the not necessarily to show that Lomborg is using Nordhaus’ DICE model to dogwhistle something that Nordhaus rejected:
> [T]here are indeed substantial net benefits from acting now rather than waiting fifty years.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
This dogwhistle is clearer when compared to what Nordhaus says a bit later in his 2012 op-ed:
> My study is just one of many economic studies showing that economic efficiency would point to the need to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions right now, and not to wait for a half-century. Waiting is not only economically costly, but will also make the transition much more costly when it eventually takes place. Current economic studies also suggest that the most efficient policy is to raise the cost of CO2 emissions substantially, either through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes, to provide appropriate incentives for businesses and households to move to low-carbon activities.
We emphasize the economic efficiency to show that Nordhaus is not using another indicator than a benefit-to-cost ratio, which he explicitely rejects:
> Elementary cost-benefit and business economics teach that this is an incorrect criterion for selecting investments or policies. The appropriate criterion for decisions in this context is net benefits (that is, the difference between, and not the ratio of, benefits and costs).
We emphasize the need to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions right now and the either through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes to show that Nordhaus argues for something that contrasts with The Copenhagen Consensus and the Sweet Sixteen’s claims.
***
This should suffice to reach three conclusions:
First, that Bart R’s claim:
(1) Dr. Nordhaus in Feb. 2012 rejected the same use of DICE as Dr. Lomborg makes as incorrect.
has been substantiated.
Second, that The Copenhagen Consensus’ analysis runs against what Nordhaus considers ELEMENTARY COST-BENEFIT AND BUSINESS ECONOMICS.
Third, that Nordhaus’ criticisms of the Sweet Sixteen is relevant to Lomborg’s testimony made under oath, contrary to Tar Baby’s song and dance.
***
We thank Tar Baby for his sleuthing effort, which made him discover the first footnote of a 15-pages document.
Let’s add this TL;DR:
> The only thing relevant is the source for Lomborg’s statement.
Another unsubstantiated assertion from Baby Tar.
What is relevant is that the source of Lomborg’s statement refers to analysis that starts with Nordhaus’ model to end up with a CBA that Nordhaus rejects as a basis for policy-making.
***
I sincerely hope Tar Baby realizes how silly it is to presume that Bart R confuses an analysis that ends up with a CBA with another one that does not, when that’s all he cares about.
In the future, Tar Baby should beware quants and clerks: their lives depend upon READING HARDER.
Peter Lang | May 1, 2013 at 2:55 am |
At some point you’ll have to aquaint yourself with the concept of provenance.
Bart R,
Perhaps Tar Baby should start with the concept of footnote. After provenance, we might make a quantum jump and talk about INTEGRITY ™ if only to provide with a textual analysis of Lomborg’s kiss of death.
Hope you don’t mind me for speaking for what you care for and for calling you a quant,
w
willard (@nevaudit) | May 1, 2013 at 10:41 am |
Meh. Name-calling, I have resigned myself to accept as inevitable in such a propagandized topic on the internet.
Though I’d thought you were speaking for yourself, from your interest in language and such, rather than out of any concern for me. I’d be touched by the thought, but as I have nothing particularly personally vested in the diversion of correcting Peter Lang’s errors as a sideline that occassionally leads me to interesting primary sources, it’s not needed on my behalf.
On behalf of language and related constructs, however, I applaud your efforts.
To be fair, I’m more of an uberquant or a quant^geek. Alas that quant has nothing like the provenance in literature as ‘Tar Baby’ (the term, not the person you presently deride with it in a way that undermines your own credibility and further propagandizes the discourse), as I was born in that briar patch.
If I were a Congressperson at the hearing my concern would be that our laws are not in concert with natural laws and in their opposition are an injustice. The many cannot be trusted by the few when laws are only the result of what is popular at the moment.
OT, but anyway …
George W. Bush says “Painting has changed my life.”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/04/george-w-bush-painting-has-changed-my-life/
Damn, he should have started painting before he became President.
Bush’s paintings are surprisingly good.
George W Bush and Cheyney gave USA cheap energy (shale gas).
So USA can be rich again and provide fulfilling lives for far more people
So you and your family can smile and be happy!!!
who is Cheyney ?
We had a guy in the executive office who shotgunned his buddy. His buddy apologized for getting in the way of the gun. The end result is that the exec’s popularity in the polls went up. Adored by WUWT-types.
Judith,
If you get a chance, could you please ask Bjorn Lomborg what he means by “green energy“?
Does he mean energy systems acceptable to ‘Greenies’?
OR
Energy systems that provide a secure supply on energy, which is available at all times on demand, with acceptable levels of reliability, and low cost, together with being acceptably safe and environmentally benign?
Regarding GHG emissions, is his definition “renewable energy” like wind, solar, wave, geothermal, biomass, etc., or is it an impartial, objective definition such as: emits less than say 50 or 100 kg CO2/MWh?
I disagree with this sentence on p8 of Bjorn Lomborg’s presentation notes:
http://www.lomborg.com/sites/default/files/Congress_testimony_April_2013_3.pdf
The first world can make it possible to solve the problem by removing the impediments to low cost nuclear power and developing low cost nuclear power technologies so they are available to the world. All the developed countries, especially the USA, has to do is to remove the shackles and allow development and competition to proceed without hindrance. The US President, almost single handed, could expedite the transformation to cheap, low GHG emissions energy. The ENGOs (enviro NGOs) would soon join in and change the minds of their followers once they see the writing on the wall. Once the ENGO’s start advocating that nuclear is the way to go, the opposition will dissipate. The US President could make this happen. But he is getting bad advice from the people he has appointed to advise him.
I’d say that nuclear’s biggest problem is that people keep finding ingenious ways of extracting cheep fossil fuels. I think it would be prudent for government to push nuclear development and research just in case later problems show up with fracking or world temperatures start spiking from the current plateau. My biggest worry is that the government will screw it up.
Canman,
Thank you for that comment. I’v e just watched the video you linked to on solar power and energy reduction. It’s interesting, but don’t agree with much the last 25% about energy reduction. I think most of it takes place over a very long time period (like replacing the house thew 100 year old house), and most is not viable until replacement. Same for industry. So it is overrated by academics. His part on solar is good.
Regarding your comments about nuclear, I agree but point out that gas can reduce emissions from electricity by only 50% nuclear by nearly 100%, gas needs a gas pipeline infrastructure to be built in developing countries that don’t yet have it, but nuclear does not, and nuclear has vastly more potential to reduce costs over the next 50 years or so than gas.
I explained a lot more about how the world can decarbonise without top-down imposed carbon pricing or other globally mandated schemes. Could I urge you to read two comments near the top of the last “Open Thread”:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/19/open-thread-weekend-14/#comment-313509
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/19/open-thread-weekend-14/#comment-313514
Thanks, Your comments were interesting and I’ll be checking out some of the links in them.
Ozzie’s book, ‘Green Illusions’ has an excellent chapter on wind. He also has an interesting chapter on nuclear waste that I don’t find nearly as discouraging as he does. His views on consumption are ridiculous, but, as you can see from the video, he’s young.
Well, Judy, shall we C? Get your citrus down and your dander up.
=================
Judith, some late comments on Lomborg’s written testimony. He accepts that warming is occurring and if unchecked will eventually (from 2070) have costs of around 1.5% of GDP.
Lomborg makes several strong points:
1. our cuts will make a difference only towards the end of the century [about 80 years hence]. “Thus, what matters is not necessarily to cut a lot now, but to make sure we can cut a lot in the long run.”
2. “What matters in the 21st century is the emissions from the developing world, not the developed world.” The West has shifted emissions to China, not reduced them.
3. “the current, old-fashioned approach to tackling global warming has failed.” It won’t solve the problem.
4. “Green energy is not ready to take over from fossil fuels.” Its costs are ridiculously high.
He concludes that the main issue is how to make green energy cheaper. A major R&D effort to produce cost-efficient, low-emissions energy is needed – this will be much cheaper than current approaches and have a much higher chance of success.
Judith, you stress the uncertainties involved in this issue. Lomborg is an expert tale-teller, able to provide a coherent, easy-to-follow and convincing narrative, and in his short testimony he glosses over many uncertainties (although the sources he references are likely to address some of them). For example, Figure 1 on the benefit or cost of global warming, with net benefits to 2010, should carry little weight. Economic forecasting has a dire record. While it may be that the overall pattern shown emerges over time, I would argue that it is impossible to project the timing or magnitudes with any confidence. To me, the main significance of this chart is that, according to some reputable economists any warming will be beneficial over the next two generations. This does not support costly action now. You might raise the question of what confidence we can have in such long-run economic projections.
One point is that the inherently uncertain economic modelling on which Lomborg relies is itself dependent on projections from climate models about which many questions have been raised, and which can not provide convincing long-term forecasts of regional or global temperature increases. The IPCC model scenarios are in turn dependent on (discredited) economic modelling of economic growth of each country to 2100, with assumptions on the energy-intensity of growth which have been shown to be false (cf the Castles-Henderson critiques). Lomborg himself includes a chart (Figure 5) showing a linear relation between economic growth and CO2 emissions. It is well-documented that as economies develop, growth becomes increasingly knowledge-intensive and less energy-intensive. Most (probably all) Western nations have had a declining energy-growth ratio for decades. The IPCC modelling ignored this – and did not modify its models as energy grew more slowly compared to economic growth than it had assumed – and Lomborg also ignores this. To me, this is an important question. I haven’t read the sources of Lomborg’s forecasts, so don’t know what assumptions they made on energy-intensity, but if they accept the climate modelling they are implicitly accepting exaggerated projections of emissions growth, and therefore the reductions required. Policy-makers need to know about such uncertainties, and this is one Lomborg should be equipped to address.
What a comment re the uncertainties fer policy making:
*…likely that any warming over the next 2 decades will
be beneficial.
*..inherent uncertainty of economic modelling on which
Lomberg relies, is itself dependent on projections from
climate models
* most, perhaps all, western nations have shown a
declining energy-growth ratio for decades, ignored by
IPCC models.
Say, where’s the call ter confident and urgent government
action on climate change given the?
Edit in last line …given the ‘above.’
Why bother with any of it? if you think you know what the climate will be like in ten or a hundred years time, your correct title is either “God” or “the patient”.
Yer hafta bother, mosomoso, resist government policy
encroachments on individual liberty. Increasing taxes
ever-more fer what-ever pretext, equality, social security,
climate change, there’s a doozy fer centralist authority
over the economy….
Stealing citizens’ economic freedom ter decide and act,
their freedom ter choose what ter consume and what
ter produce.
A serf.
Quick personal summary: Lomborg is overwhelmingly convincing. Reminds me of Richard Muller. Regardless of the facts of the science, the world is spending a lot of money and effort in directions that cannot work, cannot come close to working, and should focus on things that can.
“In short, the solution is not to make fossil fuels so expensive that nobody wants them – because that will never work – but to make green energy so cheap that everyone wants them.”
Yes, but it may never be possible to make green energy so cheap, But that should not stop us from trying. And new nuclear technologies are definitely a part of the green mix.
But backto the original problem. No one has given a satisfactory explanation of exactly how a rare gas (CO2) comprising less than 1% of the atmosphere can have such a profound effect on climate. Obviously we have to invoke thr properties of CO2 isotopic vibrational modes, but which modes? Until these questions are answered we are not on firm scientific ground. The explanation that water vapour (H2O) is the real culprit, somehow brought on by CO2 sounds tenuous and lacks conviivtion..
Obama : Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.
The overwhelming evidence of politically-funded science that more politics is needed, he carefully avoided mentioning.
Speaking of Dr. Nordhaus:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/apr/26/climate-casino-exchange/
So the Union of ‘Concerned’ Scientists is trying to suggest that all the ideologically motivated tax billions propping up mainstream climate science the state spends pursuing its self-interest by manufacturing fake certainty on alarmism, is being undone.
Is this the same Union of Concerned Scientists that remains dogged mute over Climategate and other similar blatant acts of science fraud perpetrated in order to foster ideologically motivated climate alarmism ?
And do they seriously think that private money spent on questioning the ideologically motivated mainstream, rivals what the state spends pursuing its self-interest using the public’s money ?
Obama is typical in that he masks the huge vested interest that the institution of government has in creating climate alarmism, since this provides such good excuses for expanding government via more taxes and regulations. Duping the public using the public’s own money – you gotta hand it to them.
I certainly liked Chameides written testimony. There is nothing there I would disagree with. It was also clear when it comes to policy choices that could be pursued, terming the approach as iterative risk management, while Judith’s testimony was more aimed at conveying her sense of scientific uncertainty and a decision-making procedure that somehow accounts for both maximum risk and dissenting opinions rather than consensus.
Lomborg seemed to suggest a small carbon tax ($5/tonne) would pay for damage but not mitigate usage and therefore is no good. I say what’s wrong with a tax that just pays for damage? It saves it coming out from general taxes at the expense of existing programs. Lomborg also wants more research into alternatives paid for by the government. You can tell he is from a socialist country where the government actually has some discretionary money to put for such things. The US is loath to fund research in this political climate. However, research and business incentives are exactly the kind of things a carbon tax can fund (I would suggest only $10/tonne).
Does Lomborg seriously go with the idea that if we spend ,money on researching alternative energy sources, it necessarily follows that we’ll find something cheaper than fossil fuel ?
(And if so, does this assume further research on fossil fuel will be halted, perhaps by law, so as to give feeble alternatives a chance?)
Investing in green R&D is his main suggestion with a goal of making alternative energy cheaper than fossil fuels.
Jim D, Please address my actual questions.
You can read his Summary at the end of this for yourself. Yes, he said no guarantees, but worth a try because of the potential pay-off.
http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-113-SY18-WState-BLomborg-20130425.pdf
So IF agw turns out to have some significant factual basis, and IF the effects turn out to be deleterious overall, then MAYBE investing in non-fossil research will have some value.
But it could just as easily be p*****g our taxes out against the wall. (But even that will of course still keep the mainstream gravy train in gravy).
I would though agree that, IF one is going to act ideologically on alarmist beliefs even though the science is far from settled – and seemingly becoming even less so – then subsidizing alternative research is better than taxes, since the state soon becomes addicted to more tax, and these taxes are much harder to reverse at a later stage should they be seen to be an error. ( The difficulty of reversing taxes a a later stage, is of course exactly why those who favor the tax approach, do so ). Subsidy is far more open, honest and flexible – and hence opposed by those with an ideological agenda,
Uncertainties enter at all steps when we discuss what the right choices for climate policy are.
1) There are uncertainties in the understanding of the overall strength of climate response on added GHG’s. That’s what’s discussed most extensively in the debate but that’s one of the least uncertainties of all that we meet.
2) The overall strength of the warming tells little about the negative and positive effects that the changing climate has. To assess the consequences more detailed description of the changes are needed. The consequences depend on the regional distribution of the warming and they depend even more on the changes in precipitation and severe weather patterns. There are also effects through changes in oceans (sea level, pH).
Most of the details have much greater uncertainties than the estimate of overall warming, and these uncertainties are to a large degree such that simple assumptions made to make a global overall assessment are also very unreliable.
3) How much ecological deterioration the changes in climate cause, and how they influence the human societies depends very much on the automatic adaptation that’s prevalent both in nature and in societies. This is, again, a source of very much uncertainty.
Taking the adaptability properly into account is a major impediment for all long term economic analysis. We must remember that future decisions are always done in new circumstances based on a new set of information. When we are considering the long term consequences of near term decisions, the only really important issue is their influence on the alternatives that are available in future.
i) Using non-renewable resources means that they are not available in the future
ii) Causing irreversible changes for the environment affects by definition the future alternatives (but what’s irreversible may be more difficult to judge)
iii) Developing new knowledge by research and new technologies offers more alternatives for the future in near term. (Here we are discussing speeding up the development, not doing something that would remain undone forever.) The same applies also to our influence on the near term well-being. Improvements in that make people more productive in future.
4) We are highly uncertain on the real consequences of most policy decisions. Subsidizing specific technologies may be just waste of money and resources, or it may turn out to be of huge value. The power of each proposed form of economic incentive is poorly known. The uncertainty applies both to the costs and to the benefits.
5) The overall assessments of the type done by Integrated Assessment Models suffer from all the above uncertainties, they suffer so much of them that no simply stated numerical outcome should be given any value. The models are useful for people who work with them as they help in understanding relationships between various factors, but they cannot provide direct answers. The results obtained by Nicolas Stern and his followers differ totally from those obtained by Lomborg. It’s easy to find essential weaknesses in both, but it’s not possible to produce any other calculation that would not be equally dependent on rather arbitrary choices of model details or parameter values. (The problems are much worse than in climate models.)
Having all these uncertainties is not a proper reason for concluding that no strong action is justified. It is a valid reason for favoring robust alternatives. It is a reason for reducing CO2 emissions wherever that can be done with little collateral damage. It’s also a reason for accelerating creation of further knowledge trough science and technology development.
Accelerating technology development means both funding of science and applied research and subsidizing initial deployment. Subsidizing heavily full scale deployment is, however, more likely to lead to waste of resources and money than be worth the cost.
Pekka you may be interested in a recent paper put out by the NBER that discusses many of the issues you raise: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18929.pdf
“there are many promising approaches to decision making under `deep’ uncertainty that may allow us to represent the nature of our information with greater delity, and make policy recommendations that account for the ambiguity in our knowledge. Such tools, when combined with empirical
inputs that represent both what we do and don’t know comprehensively, could provide useful policy guidance. But we must also recognize that the world is under no obligation to agree with our models. We must expect the unexpected, and heed Mark Twain’s warning:
‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.
The paper is, indeed, interesting and the approach is rather similar to my own thinking. I do largely agree with their conclusions like the following excerpt from their last chapter of their paper
We are left with the dilemma that there are strong arguments for need to act promptly but no good guidelines for deciding on either the strength of the action or its form.
There have been arguments from both sides telling that some particular choices are certain to be beneficial. Follower’s of Stern approach claim that the benefits of acting outweigh by a big factor all the costs and that therefore almost any action is justifiable (even then we have the question of what is part of “almost any”). From the other side Roger Pielke Jr. has argued in The Climate Fix that getting any results from climate policy specific choices is so difficult that we should concentrate on policies that have other energy policy benefits as well and perhaps more importantly just those.
At such extremes the best policy choices may be well defined even with the large uncertainties that persist, but my own view is that we cannot pick either of these extremes as proven but must search for better approaches for comparing policy alternatives.
One of my conclusions is that we must reduce the decision analysis to a comparison of rather short term alternatives (perhaps 20 years). By that I don’t mean that longer term effects should be disregarded or considered less important, it’s just necessary to project those effects onto the shorter term analysis as differences in the final state at the end of the period being analyzed. (This approach has connections to the methods of dynamic programming and Bellman’s equation. The concept of real options is also related to this.)