The Black Swan and the Bell Curve
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
If your neighbor said to you "looks like it's going to rain tomorrow night -- I saw a storm system coming in while I was out of town", and then tomorrow night it rains, you don't say "well, Fred, you predicted it, but we don't know for sure that the rain was caused by the storm you saw, so we're going to be sure we take everything we hear from you with a grain of salt."
The author wasn't saying "the rain was caused by the storm Fred saw". Rather, he's saying that no one is listening to Fred even though the freaky weather suggests that he's been right so far.
[1] http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/news/increasingly-variable-summ...
Take flooding, for example. Yes, there have been some bad floods recently but no, flooding isn't unusually bad. Quote:
"Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis."
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/04/decrease-in-floods...
The weather so far suggests the people claiming doom and gloom is already happening have been wrong so far. Certainly one can find what looks like evidence to the contrary by cherry-picking - just find specific places where specific types of weather extremes happened to get "more extreme" over the period for which you've got good data, then write an article like the one you link to. Ask yourself this: If they had looked at some different region and found it to have a trend towards less extreme weather or to have no trend at all, would this finding have been publishable? Could they have gotten press for saying "we looked at all the natural causes we could think of, ruled them out, and are forced to conclude that AGW made for less extreme weather in (area X)"? If not, there's a publication bias such that we'd see regular "it's getting worse" articles even if it were not, in fact, getting worse.
In Germany the whole deal is about renewable energy. Even though nuclear energy does not produce greenhouse gasses and seems to be clean, it is by no means a renewable energy source. For most Germans, clean energy is certainly not the goal, but sustainable and renewable energy is. The article totally confuses these two things.
Also, a majority of Germans believes that nuclear energy is just too dangerous to be handled by humans. (Yes, we are pussies in this regard.)
The commitment to phase out nuclear energy does not mean to be less commited to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact it only means that you have to be more focussed on your goals than before.
Personally, I heavily doubt that the cut of 40% in greenhouse gas emissions until 2020 (compared to the level of 1990) will work out. But it is nevertheless good to have these ambitious goals. They have probably led to better legislation to encourage the use of renewable energy than in other countries. On some level these goals put pressure on politicians to do something. If they lead to only 5% reduction, I would already consider it a success.
If that scale for success seems stupid to you, you are right. But this is the measurement of success I put on politicians. I don't expect much from them. That's what I learned from the past. Most of them can only think until the next election. 2020 is just too distant to be important for most politicians.
I think what NNT is trying to say is not that the probability of the tails extreme events is greater than normal but rather that these Black Swan events are rare and we tend not to predict them due to our bell curve obsession. When they do happen however they're game-changers.
Assuming that the actors involved were rational, both the BP disaster and the housing market crashes could be characterized as the result of a mis-application of the normal distribution to distributions that actually had fat tails. BP management _way_ underestimated the risk of an extremely costly crisis, as did housing speculators.
(1) Humans are evil. They are sinful, greedy, duplicitous, violent, irrational, and destructive.
The claims that the concerns about human caused significant global warming are just a flim flam fraud are just deceptions of the Devil.
(2) Evil humans are destroying the planet, the 100% all-natural, delicate, sensitive, pure, pristine, precious environment.
The weather was never like this before evil humans started working with the bow and arrow.
(3) For this evil transgression, humans will be made to suffer terrible retribution of extreme weather, failed crops, farms and forests turned into deserts, lowlands flooded, cute, cuddly, sweet, pure white baby polar bears drowning in the ice-free Arctic, penguins starving, and worse. The whales will die, and when the whales die, the oceans will die and then we will die, and the whales are starting to die.
(4) For this retribution, humans need redemption or death from their sin, evil, and transgressions. The only possible redemption is sacrifice. We have to start by giving up computers, telephones, airplanes, plastics, TV, yes, even including the soaps, electric power, cars, frozen foods, and McDonald's French fries. Then we must give up synthetic fabrics, permanent press, washing machines, paper plates, deodorant, and women's bras and panties.
Humans must abstain from sex.
But this will not be enough, not nearly enough: The sun is about to stop moving across the sky, and the only solution is to have a holy Mayan priest hold ceremonies pouring the blood of evil humans on a sacred rock. The only qualified priest is Saint Laureate Al Guru aided by the dedicated, devoted Guru Acolytes lead by Sister Laurie.
The blood will come from sacrificing virgins (when they first arrived at the ceremony with Saint Guru).
Only in this way, along with Cap and Trade and the EPA, can the planet be saved.
For some reason, millions of people believe that scientists, who spend all day trying to prove each other wrong, have been conspiring to lie about global warming. At the same time, those millions ignore the actual organized disinformation campaign perpetrated by those whose businesses get hurt whenever people start conserving fuel.
Global warming is real to the present depending on when one starts to count from. In the past the earth has been at times warmer than now and cooler than now.
Humans responsible? Human are clearly responsible for some global warming: E.g., light a match and warm the earth. But humans clearly are not responsible for all the quite wild changes in climate in the geological record before humans even existed. And it is tough to say that humans had much to do with the earth falling into the Little Ice Age or starting to come out of it.
Is current human activity significantly warming the earth? I have looked hard yet seen no credible reports that it is. No, I do not count Guru Ramaswami's 'radiative forcing' crapola at the center of the IPCC documents. For 'climate science', that is nearly all just a flim flam fraud scam by a closed group of people pushing their orthodoxy to push their own careers.
I know; I know: One of Al Guru's Yale profs liked to take vacations in Hawaii so put a CO2 sampling station there and has CO2 concentration data for some decades. Then the screaming started: "CO2 is a greenhouse gas, will 'trap' heat and warm the planet, and we will DESTROY THE EARTH." BS. CO2 only absorbs in three narrow bands, one for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the molecule, and all three bands are out in the infrared. Net, CO2 doesn't absorb much energy and is trivial, a nit, compared with water vapor, methane, clouds, etc. The CO2 is just something to scream about.
My understanding is that the predictions of rapid warming by the 'climate scientists' over the past few decades never happened thus seriously hurting their credibility. Heck, the 'leading climate scientist' back in 1970 or so (I'll save the time to look up his name, claims, and date -- but you remember, it was a 'Newsweek' or 'Time' cover story) about 'global cooling'.
For the article, it seems to have gotten the memo: Don't talk about 'global warming' and, instead, talk about 'climate change'. So, jumping in with the media, the article seems to go along with the suggestion that human activity has caused climate change has caused extreme climate this spring caused many more than the usual spring tornadoes in the US and, in particular, ones aimed at population centers, all without any serious, numerical, historical data on tornadoes in the US. Sure: ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and PBS can get people up on their hind legs this way, but not me. So, the screaming is just flim flam to stir up hysteria.
I have seen no "organized disinformation campaign", and you provided no evidence of one.
It's not about a "campaign". Instead it's about the climate and solid evidence and science about the climate. So far, net, 'no worries, mate'. For the flim flam fraudsters, ROFL.
I used to debate all this nonsense on Reddit but gave up on Reddit and saw that mostly everyone saw that the global warming crowd was just pushing a fraud and quit listening. So, I quit arguing. So, I'm not going to dig out all my details on the 'radiative forcing' crapola at the center of the IPCC garbage, the NASA guy who makes so much noise, the good work done by the guy at MIT, the Hadley e-mail data, the 50 cent per KWH solar power in Germany, the wacko Al Guru graph that failed to notice that in the geological record from the Vostok ice core data the CO2 increased hundreds of years AFTER the temperature increased, etc. The whole thing is dishonest science and a flim flam fraud scam.
I've got good news for you: Relax. F'get about Al Guru, Cap and Trade, shutting down coal plants and, thus, wrecking the US economy, the polar bears, the whales, the rising sea levels, etc. Let the EPA enviro-wackos get real jobs and save the tax money. Let Icemelt Immelt find something useful to do. Let Al Guru find some more acolyte chicks to bed. Tell the UN IPCC to go back to railroad engineering. F'get about the fraud.
Give up on the morality play of human sin and evil and the classic dramatic trilogy of transgression, retribution, and redemption. If you like that trilogy, then listen to Wagner's 'Ring' or 'Parsifal' or Tolkien's 'Ring' or 'Star Wars'. Relax. After all, it's just a movie.
There's nothing significant against Exxon at that Web site, certainly nothing like your "organized disinformation campaign".
Maybe Exxon funded some 'climate science', although the Web site gave no evidence.
Well, how'd the whole 'global warming' thing get started anyway? Sure: VP Al Guru told the NSF, etc. to fund his buddies for 'climate alarmism'. That's how the 'closed community' of 'climate science' alarmists got started: They all reviewed each other's research papers and grant proposals, and they all knew that there was only one source of money, Al Guru, and that that source wanted only one answer -- human CO2 raising temperatures. Now that they are on the back of that tiger, and could not have a career in science anywhere else, they have to just keep riding that tiger.
But your URL has alarmist nonsense about extreme weather -- droughts heat waves, etc. There's essentially no connection between such things and the arguments about global warming, at least not for decades or centuries.
So, the increases in temperature over the past few decades are so small that they are tough to measure or to show an increase, but even without showing an increase in temperature we are supposed to believe that the increase, too small to measure, is causing massive climate 'change' now, as with the tornadoes this spring? Total reeking BS.
But when the predictions for global warming clearly didn't happen, there was a memo to talk about climate 'change'. While global 'warming' can be characterized by just average temperature, say, over the planet, over a year, measured by, say, satellite, and while some temperature records go back hundreds of years and some temperature evidence, say, ice core data, goes back hundreds of thousands of years, climate 'change' is MUCH more difficult to evaluate, e.g., compare with the past. While the past temperature record is nothing like what we can measure today, the climate 'change' record is much worse. So, the climate change screamers can keep screaming, as for the tornadoes this spring, without much comparison with the past.
For the funding corrupting science, f'get about Exxon and concentrate on Al Guru.
That is, the LESS data they have, the MORE screaming they are free to do. We just should refuse to listen.
Besides, the usual media, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, just LOVE the morality play of evil humans doing transgressions and causing retribution and the drama of tornadoes. Grab'm by the gut, and their eyeballs will be sure to follow, and then get the ad revenue. Those media outlets are in the ad business and will push anything at all, any sewage -- crime, scandal, blood, danger -- that can be turned into drama to grab people by the heart, the gut, and below the belt.
E.g., what was the frequency of tornadoes in the area of the present state of Kansas each year over the past 400 years? Not a chance of getting good data. And, heck, the media won't even report such frequency data over the past, say, decade. Why not? The data would show no significant change, have no drama, and would kill the made up story with drama.
So, the tornadoes this spring can be screamed to be from 'climate change' from evil humans, as we have heard.
You are spouting just alarmist nonsense.
The data for human caused significant global warming is BS; for climate change, much worse. You have no serious evidence.
You didn't take my advice just to relax and f'get about Al Guru.
How much are YOU getting paid?
Are you suggesting that climate science is more remunerative than the fossil fuel industry? I'd wager that the top two or three oil execs make more than every climate scientist in the whole world, combined.
> There's nothing significant against Exxon at that Web site, certainly nothing like your "organized disinformation campaign".
Huh? So, what does qualify as an organized disinformation campaign? I mean, did you actually look at the website? http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php
We know:
a) Exxon, and many other companies besides, makes less money if cap-and-trade is instituted or a carbon tax levied. These are multi-billion dollar industries that can afford to throw employees and tons of money at their problems.
b) Exxon has given lots of money to think-tanks that spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about climate science. See the URL above.
c) FUD works. It's cheap and doesn't need to be true. Witness how effective creationists have been in getting the media and schools to present "both sides". It has delayed action on things like tobacco use, acid rain, and ozone depletion. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
Scientists don't want catastrophic climate change -- lots study it because they're genuinely worried about the planet and their kids' future. Many feel that, if climate change is real, it's their ethical duty to make sure that people in power know this. And media organizations would rather cover celebrities and sex scandals. The fact that there is a media narrative about some story doesn't imply that the narrative is the cause of the story's coverage in the first place.
If you're so sure of yourself, though, perhaps you should engage people that know far more than me? Go propose edits to the Global warming article on Wikipedia -- they have extensive archives of debate that form the basis for the article's content. I would be surprised if much of what you have said hasn't already been directly and more thoroughly addressed.
All this said, though, perhaps the bigger question is: what would convince you that global warming is a big problem and that it's being caused by people?
Your claim that three energy industry executives make more money than all the climate science research is likely false: A research grant in science to a research professor goes for about $500,000 a year. The university grabs about 60% for 'overhead' (help support the English department, etc.). The rest covers or helps cover the prof, travel, photocopying, lab equipment, grad students, etc. Add up 100 such profs and have $50 million a year.
But nearly all the Fortune 500 CEOs are just hired managers and, surprisingly, are not so well paid if only because typically they don't last more then 5 years as CEO. So, maybe they make $10 million a year, for a few years; then they don't go start again in the mail room and, instead, just retire. After the taxes, considering how few years they were CEO and long they might continue to live, a guy who owns, say, 10 McDonald's can do better if only because he can keep his business for decades.
So, for your three CEOs you are up to maybe $30 million which is less than the $50 million for the profs.
Sure, a given CEO might some year cash in some stock options and make $50 million, but that's a one-time thing.
Instead of such salaries, the big bucks are from owning something not worth much and then making it valuable. Why? Because only a tiny fraction of the people can evaluate the tree that might grow from a seed or help such a seed grow to a tree. E.g., relevant here on HN, there's hardly a single venture partner anywhere in the US who will even try to evaluate the chances of a particular project becoming another Google. Instead, for any investment amount enough to support a few people for a few years, say, over $1 million, they will invest in something simple such as 'traction' and do so on the basis if the track record of 'traction'. For 'another Google', they will be happy if it happened but will make no effort toward that goal. So, entrepreneurs such as discussed on HN some hedge fund managers, especially J. Simons, can make much more. On all of Wall Street, there is exactly one person who understands what Renaissance Technologies does and has good reason to know why it makes money: Simons. Period.
But, that some oil company executives are making money says nothing about global warming or really that Exxon is funding FUD.
A lot of the global warming hysteria is from stimulating the desire of people to have a religion. With the major organized religions in decline, Communism, global warming, etc. can find some fertile ground.
There is also general paranoia such as made the morality plays popular going way back in the history of 'story telling'.
"All this said, though, perhaps the bigger question is: what would convince you that global warming is a big problem and that it's being caused by people?"
Right, that's the bigger question. The answer is simple and the same for global warming, climate change, dying of anthrax, having Yellowstone blow again and put a layer of ash 10 feet thick over much of the US, have the earth hit by an asteroid, etc. Same for all of them: Look for good data and good arguments, especially good science.
E.g., for the asteroids, yes, the various belts of asteroids are unstable so at any time a bump can cause an asteroid to leave the belt and head for earth. Right. So, for a fairly good first cut, dangerous asteroids will arrive like a Poisson process. But we have a very good estimate of the arrival time: The rate is less than once per 65 million years. So, for the next few years, the probability is tiny. And that's why I don't worry about asteroids.
For anthrax, we have good public health data and we understand anthrax. So, for my life in the burbs, no worries, mate.
Etc.
For global warming and climate change, the data is total BS, and the science is worse. So, flush it. No worries, mate.
Easy enough.
Done.
For you, again, relax.
Anyhow, I don't know why you would put a prof's compensation at $500k because you're including all the people s/he pays, and then not do the same for the executive.
As for CEOs of the biggest oil firms:
ExxonMobil: CEO:~$30 million http://people.forbes.com/profile/rex-w-tillerson/31576
Some other guy: $13.5 million http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/officerProfile?symbol=...
Chevron: ~$16 million http://people.forbes.com/profile/john-s-watson/18163
So, say $60 million -- and that's just three dudes. They're earning the equivalent of 500 climate scientists compensated at $120k/year.
Say, what do you figure the probability is that you're wrong?
For the $500 K per year per prof in field and experimental science, that's not their "compensation". The $120 K a year you mentioned is closer. My $10 million was within the ballpark, within a factor of only 2 from the data you found. Next, the CEO salaries have nothing to do with global warming or climate change.
An great example of bad data is Al Guru's movie. Again, he blew the Vostok ice core data and neglected to note that the CO2 increases were hundreds of years after the temperature increases. So, clearly CO2 did not cause the temperature increases.
Al Guru's pictures of polar bears and glaciers are meaningless and not "good" data. Similarly for his observation of snows on Kilimanjaro. So, Guru wanted to bring in lots of anecdotal this and that instead of what is clearly the crucial measure for global warming -- temperature, just temperature.
The bad data and analysis goes on and on. Guru is trying to make money (he has), be famous (he is), and push his favorite project, scaring people about global warming. It's likely a religious thing with him, considering his background. Whatever his motives are, his evidence and arguments are BS.
For the IPCC, it's really no better. 'Radiative forcing' is total made up crack pot BS. Really the IPCC is about getting 'carbon credit' transfer payments from wealthy countries to poor ones.
Yet the global warming people want us to go to electric power at the plant from about 2 cents per KWH to about 50 cents, convert to electric cars for which there are no feasible batteries for how the vast majority of cars are used, even to convert long haul trucks to batteries which is absurd, and on and on. It's the same as the Mayan priests killing people to pour their blood on rocks to keep the sun moving across the sky.
Just what is it about total BS crapola you find so attractive? Dump it. Flush it. F'get about it.
The point I was making about salaries dealt with the size of the vested interests and the financial means of those involved to protect them.
"The global warming people" (???) really? 2 cents to 50 -- are you presenting these numbers in good faith? Anyhow, lots of "them" also think nuclear power is fine too (or should I say "Them", because it's much better to think in terms of nefarious monolithic demonizable opponents, far more productive and likely to lead to smart outcomes). It seems the estimate of "$0.50/kwh was, at the very least, on the high end. Some estimates put solar at $0.12/kwh by 2015 (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-06/10/content_126... -- btw, these citation things are awfully handy. You should really try them out some time. Say what you like about the nefarious "Them", They are pretty into the whole being-scholarly thing.)
Also, I'd say the bulk of climate change advocates think that the best gains can be achieved through conservation. There are lots of ways of living ones life that require way less resources. I mean, it's a pretty arbitrary decision whether to be into NASCAR or the Tour de France, into motor boat racing or sailing, into massive low-pro-tire pick-up trucks or a sport sedan.
But this discussion does not come up to the level of seriousness for me to go to my directory of global warming information and pull up references and details.
The 50 US cents per KWh at the plant is okay: That's ballpark what the total cost has been in Germany that tried hard with subsidies to get farmers to install solar panels.
Sure, people can keep working on solar, wind, low head hydro, etc. power and hope to get the cost down to 20 cents or so, etc.
Still solar and wind are total made up nonsense, wind likely for centuries, and solar at least for decades. A big, huge problem is that those sources are unpredictable so need storage, and the cheap storage is not available. So, basically have to pay the CapEx twice. That is, have to pay for a coal plant to use when the wind is not blowing. Then the coal plant operator will have to raise his rates to cover his CapEx for the time his plant is not operating. Bummer.
On average in the US, at the plant, nukes have been under 2 cents per KWh and coal has been under 3 cents. In comparison, the dreams of the people pushing 'clean, renewable' energy would shoot the US economy in the gut.
For the probability, that's a silly issue: The Mayan priests who killed people to pour blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky (I have a reference to a scholarly book on the Mayans, and Google books or Amazon shows the page with the specifics) picked a good problem: The Mayans didn't know enough to debunk the priests.
Al Guru did the same: Solid science for what the climate will be in 50 years under various scenarios for human activity does not exist. In particular, about the only way we know to calculate the 'climate' is from 'first principles' of physics and chemistry, and that involves actually predicting the weather, each cubic millimeter or so, INCLUDING the oceans, all over the planet for each millisecond or so for 50 years, and we can't do that computing. [Note: All simplifications are not from first principles and are approximations of unknown accuracy. So, can't actually calculate all the clouds in detail, put in a simple model for the clouds; for the oceans, do something still simpler.]
Then for the 'climate', need to do the full calculation, do that computing for a narrow distribution of initial conditions around the conditions now. Big problem: We don't even know the initial conditions, e.g., in the depths of the oceans and their currents, accurately. Anyway, run the weather prediction a few million times and then take empirical distributions and find the climate. Then change the scenario of human activity, do it again, and compare.
Tough to do. Hasn't been done.
Similarly for a gamma ray burst blowing the atmosphere off the earth, Yellowstone wiping out much of the US, a moving black hole sucking up the earth, some microbe we don't know how to kill wiping out humanity, etc.
So, what do we do? Well, we do NOT fall for superstition and gurus like the Mayans did. We don't go for morality plays about evil humans with transgression from evil, retribution from an angry god, and redemption from sacrifice. We don't sacrifice lambs or virgins. And we don't sacrifice our coal plants, half of our electric power.
For 'global warming', first, we look at the arguments of Al Guru, Guru Ramaswamy, etc., move forward to their first absurd, outrageous, egregious, grotesquely incompetent and/or dishonest point and then flush their arguments and reject those gurus. For Al Guru, the time between the high temperatures and the high CO2 levels he didn't show in the Vostok data is enough to flush his stuff. For the IPCC and Guru Ramaswami, his 'radiative forcing' is enough to flush.
So, for the alarmists, we have nothing but superstition.
So, we have to proceed on our own.
So, we start: Is there any empirical evidence that the earth is getting warmer now? We can measure temperature with astounding accuracy, and now with satellites we can get good data for the whole planet, day by day. May I have the envelope, please? "Nope, there's no evidence."
For a little more, as far as we can tell (I'm sure you have the NAS report), the temperature now is exactly the same as it was before the start of the Little Ice Age caused, maybe, by missing sun spots for some decades. So, since then we've been pulling out of the Little Ice Age and, net, since just before the Little Ice Age, all of human activity has had zip, zilch, zero effect on temperature. Net, human caused global warming doesn't pass the sniff test.
Next, what about the science? Do we worry about CO2, methane, water vapor, chlorinated hydrocarbons, aerosols? First- cut, changes in any of these seem to be at most small and trivial.
Next, what is the record on climate variability? Well, there's been a lot of variability. So, that we see nothing going on now means, first-cut, no worries, mate.
Next, if there we do begin to see some changes, then we will address the issue again.
The idea that the climate is wildly 'unstable' (got'a stop those evil butterflies from flapping their wings) and that we are at a tipping point and point of no return, with no good evidence, we have to pass off as superstitious nonsense like the Mayans.
Net, we're not Mayans. We don't wreck our society for superstitious fears. We just don't do that.
No sale. Ain't buying.
Done.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co...
?
The 'radiative forcing' term was not well defined and, as I recall, nothing like what Ramaswami explained in the main, relevant IPCC document. Ramaswami's stuff was junk, but the usage at the Web page seems better but a long way from good.
That a 30% increase in CO2 concentration leads to an increase of 3 degrees C is tough to swallow: CO2 absorbs such a small amount of energy, especially after what would be absorbed by water vapor, methane, etc. Also, I'd want to see that CO2 calculation in detail, e.g., in terms of the CO2 spectral lines and the radiation from the surface of the earth. Also the page mentioned 'saturation': They didn't say just what they meant, but a guess is that some gas is asborbing all it can. They didn't say how close CO2 is to 'saturation'. My guess is that CO2 is close to saturation now. I'd want to see some details.
At one point they want to refer to 'sophisticated global climate models': That's easy -- it's the empty set.
In places their writing tries to be a snow job, e.g., using undefined acronyms.
They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.
Generally, though, the stuff from Al Guru and the IPCC (Tom Friedman is MUCH worse) is so bad that I lost patience with this stuff: The whole thing is at least 99 44/100% flim flam fraud deceptive manipulation,
Science provides huge rewards to those who disprove an existing theory. By the sounds of it, you seem to think it would be "easy" to do so with AGW. So why not just systematically lay out your refutation? If you're right you'll be famous and save the planet billions/trillions of dollars. You'll be able to command huge fees to give speeches, etc. etc. If this doesn't work out, then it suggests that science is broken for AGW. In which case, why would this happen when it's the same process that works pretty darn well for everything else?
> They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.
So? People can't change their minds when confronted with evidence?
It's possible to do some good work in 'climate science', and maybe there is some by more than just the one guy at MIT or the one in Georgia. If they do good science, then maybe Nature would publish it. Here I mean they can do some good science which, however, is a very long way from really answering the main question, are we about to cook the planet? E.g., the MIT guy did some diffusion in a column calculation. Looks okay, but it's a very, very long way from an answer to the main question.
But generally my view would be as you put it that on 'AGW' -- anthropomorphic global warming? -- science is broken.
Why don't I get rich and famous debunking the alarmist nonsense? Because the alaremist 'science' is making various approximations. Maybe with their assumptions, their arithmetic is correct. E.g., if do the energy balance arithmetic carefully and get it right, then okay. Nice work. If it says no changes, good. If it says big changes, then, sadly, the work is good only until the changes start to become significant. If they do everything correctly on energy balance, then my objection would be, in the case of big changes, using that analysis to say what the climate will be in 10, 50, 100 years. I could say that, and maybe it would get published, but it would hardly make me rich or famous.
Broadly Al Guru picked a 'good' problem, that is, like the Mayan priests who scared people without enough solid information do debunk. Again, the solid science we want is not available. With such science we could debunk the alarmists by saying in rock solid terms what the climate would be year by year for the next, say, 500 years. I can't do that. No one can do that.
So, why is science broken for AGW? The fundamental reason is that no one can really get a solid answer to what the climate will be decades into the future under various scenarios of human activity. The shorter term political reason is that the 'climate science' community was started heavily by VP Gore's direction of the funding and, then, the interests of the IPCC to find a way to send money from rich countries to poor ones. So, there are lots of vested interests and not much science solid enough to settle the issue.
So, again, note (1) the temperature is, as far as we can tell, now just where it was before the start of the Little Ice Age; (2) from the good temperature data we have now from satellites, apparently the planet is not getting warmer now. So, what to do? Just keep watching the data and the science, If there is any that is very important, and then readdress the question once it begins to look important.
But there's a big HUGE thing NOT to do now: Wreck the world economy over very inconclusive science.
It lists a "key quote" and a "quote". Do you disagree with either? Here they are:
"No known mechanism can stop global warming in the near term. International agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, would have no detectable effect on average temperature within any reasonable policy time frame of 50 years or so, even with full compliance." Source: Chapter 47 of the Cato Handbook for Congress, 107 Congress
-and-
In response to the World Watch Report in May 2003 that linked climate change and severe weather events: "It's false. There is absolutely no evidence that extreme weather events are on the increase. None. The argument that more and more dollar damages accrue is a reflection of the greater amount of wealth we've created." - Jerry Taylor Source: "Enviro Trends: Poor to Bear Brunt of Climate Change"
If you think those quotes are FUD or "disinformation", please make your case. They seem pretty sensible to me. The first quote is inarguably true - people who favored Kyoto seemed not to care that it would make no difference in the warming trend, it had symbolic value. It was regarded even by its advocates as "a first step" that might possibly at some point in the future lead to further changes that did help.
The second quote is roughly true as well though it would be easier to find people who disagree. If you cherry pick you can of course find specific areas where some variety of weather seems to be getting "more extreme" over various timeframes, but more inclusive studies don't find much of a trend. And in particular, the study he claims is bogus because it's based on dollar value of damage probably is indeed bogus for that reason.
I think the purpose of the quotes is not to demonstrate that the organizations are FUD-dispersers, but that they're all pushing the same message: be skeptical about what you hear about global warming. I'm sure PR people have tons of nice ways of framing what it is that Exxon is doing (I mean, why shouldn't ExxonMobil have the right to advocate for its own interests, right?) FUD is less effective if it's obvious, and it's in every anti-CO2-regulation think-tank's interest to appear as objective as possible, and make it look they're reasonable people who just might have come down on the other side, but, goshdarnit, they just came to a different conclusion because that was the best one any objective rational observer could come to. Also, the Cato institute seems to have more integrity among the libertarian-leaning groups, at least in my eyes, so it's not surprising that at least they would be more measured.
But while were here, let's look at some other recipients, though: "Cooler heads coalition" deeds: Held a congressional and media briefing entitled "Impacts of Global Warming: Why the Alarmist View is Wrong". Speakers presented arguments against claims that global warming will cause increases in extreme weather events, sea level rise, vector-borne diseases, and species extinction. Source: Cooler Heads Coalition website 5/04
CEI: 'Published article named "Liberal 'Scientists' Lead Jihad Against Global-Warming Skeptics" No mention of 'jihad' anywhere within the article itself, and no explanation for the reference to a connection between the scientists and jihad in the title of the article. It seems to be a cheap attempt at sensationalism and hate mongering by trying to connect global warming scientists to terrorism.' Source: CEI website, 5/07" ... and 'Warning that the $125 million film fails to employ sound science to back up its depictions, the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute has sent reporters a listing of global-warming skeptics who can be counted on to dispute the film's premise. Source: "Disaster Flick Unleashes a Blizzard of Spin," Scripps Howard News, May 14 2004'
Heritage Foundation: "[C]alls to drastically reduce emissions in sulfur dioxide (SOx), nitrogen oxide (NOx), mercury, and carbon dioxide would jeopardize U.S. energy and national security. ...The Bush administration and Congress need to steadfastly resist alarmist calls to drastically reduce carbon dioxide, a clear, odorless gas and a fundamental nutrient of the planetary food chain. Curbing carbon dioxide would cause a major change in the electricity-generation fuel mix and would adversely affect the nation's energy supply and economic strength."
... I'd say much of this counts as FUD, wouldn't you? And there looks to be about 150 of such organizations, with employees working all day, every day, to make sure that their organization continues to receive funding from businesses to whom a carbon tax is a major threat.
Again, rather than do a point-by-point, I'm just going to pick one. You hilite that CEI wrote an article titled "Liberal 'Scientists' Lead Jihad Against Global-Warming Skeptics". Yeah, the title sounds sensationalist - titles often do that, but get over the title and actually read the damn article. It turns out to mostly be a debunking of...the effort that produced the exxonsecrets site! Here's the article:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20573
Quote:
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In 2006, UCS decided to attack ExxonMobil, the world’s largest private energy company, over the issue of global warming. It also decided on its tactics: It would demonize the oil company by comparing it to cigarette companies. ExxonMobil, said UCS, was “adopt[ing] the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics ... to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue.”
In a paper issued Jan. 3, 2007, UCS accuses ExxonMobil of funding “front groups” opposed to the climate-alarmist agenda of groups such as UCS and of former Vice President Al Gore. The company, said the UCS report, had distributed $16 million to 43 advocacy groups from 1998 to 2005 “to confuse the public on global-warming science.” Let’s leave aside the fact that $16 million over eight years can’t match the $2 billion that the federally funded Climate Change Science Program spends each year on global warming, or even the $4 million annual budget of just one of the many well-funded global-warming advocacy groups, Strategies for the Global Environment (the umbrella organization for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change).[...]
UCS doesn’t focus its attacks on the actual work produced by the organizations it targets. Instead, it tries to discredit its opponents by using ad hominem innuendo. And that’s what gets the attention of the media. For instance, when astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas determined that the Earth’s temperature had actually been warmer at earlier times in history -- a premise endorsed by a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel -- UCS ignored the research but attacked the researcher personally, noting that Baliunas was affiliated with the George C. Marshall Institute, which UCS said had received $630,000 in ExxonMobil grants for its climate-science program.
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>And there looks to be about 150 of such organizations, with employees working all day, every day, to make sure that their organization continues to receive funding from businesses to whom a carbon tax is a major threat.
Ahem. One of those organization is a university that gets occasional $5k grants. $5k probably gets a nice thank you letter but does not get you employees "working all day, every day" to make your interest theirs. Another dozen random links I clicked were to organizations for whom the documented contribution of Exxon is $0. If you think there are 150 organizations on that list that are heavily influenced by Exxon, you've been snookered by a PR effort.
Here's why AGW-denial often counts as FUD: it occurs within the public sphere, rather that the scientific (or even legal) one, and is thus not subject to (1) actor accountability, (2) the same standards of evidence, or (3) cogency/coherence of argument.
Science FUD goes like this:
a) careful, cautious scientists whose jobs depend on being "right" about nearly everything spend months researching, writing, and editing a careful, cautious paper making conservative claims supportive of AGW. Doing so, it is rather difficult to act in "bad faith".
b) In response, rather than produce a similarly careful cautious reply (in a scientific venue), the anti-AGW organization produces a "white paper", or press release, or op-ed, in which they "debunk" the scientific paper by making superficially appealing arguments, attractive to the 99% of people who are non-scientists. Such a reply is easy to produce by acting in "bad faith" (although, to a lawyer type, as lobbyists frequently are, this is simply advocacy).
Looking at 1-3, then: (1) Note the gross asymmetry between (a) and (b). If the actors in (a) are wrong, they lose standing in the scientific community, and in the case of scientific misconduct could very well lose their jobs. This is very hard to imagine happening in the case of a think-tank pundit, who operates in the institutional-memory-free public sphere, because (b)'s actors are not interacting with a community of experts but rather simply engaging in advocacy. Indeed, assuming that they are receiving funding from those with an anti-AGW agenda, they could even lose their jobs for telling the truth (c.f. David Frum at the AEI http://wonkette.com/404420/david-frum-leaves-national-review). See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagen...
(2) Anti-AGW organization "scholars" often trade in citation-free commentary (e.g. http://www.aei.org/article/103523). Because it's not their job to convince a group of scientific peers, they can get paid to do research sans scientific evidence.
(3) When anti-science advocacy groups have to present a cogent or coherent argument they tend to fall apart. E.g., the FUD against gay marriage (Perry v. Schwarzenegger) and FUD against evolution (Kitzmiller v. Dover School District). I've not yet found any such trial that pits anti- against pro-AGW people. But if this were to occur, I expect we would find a similar outcome.
One reason you have trouble finding such trials is that the pro-AGW people are afraid to debate anti-AGW people in public. When such debates happen, the skeptics tend to win. Here's one example of that happening:
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070316_notcrisis.pdf
> Anti-AGW organization "scholars" often trade in citation-free commentary (e.g. http://www.aei.org/article/103523).
Yes, articles in the Los Angeles Times tend not to have citations. So what? It's not like the author is just making stuff up. The fact that you don't know offhand where some fact comes from mostly means you weren't paying attention to the underlying debate. (AEI, Cato, and Heritage studies do generally have citations, whether or not the resulting newspaper op-eds include them.)
Besides, pro-AGW folks also "often trade in citation-free commentary". The worst examples being when they discuss a specific skeptic's work but mischaracterize, paraphrase, and refuse to link to the original so their claims can be checked. (RealClimate did that repeatedly with respect to Steve McIntyre, leading to his amusing nickname: "he-who-must-not-be-named")
Oh, and you left off a step for the pro-AGW process: "Issue a dire press release that exaggerates your findings." :-)
> careful, cautious scientists whose jobs depend on being "right" about nearly everything
In what sense does an academic scientists' job depend on being "right" about anything? It does depend on publishing lots of articles, but most published articles are false. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/) What matters for publication is that the thesis is interesting and somewhat defensible at the time based on prior research, not that it's "right". They don't take your phd away when it turns out your thesis was wrong; wrong articles still count towards your publication record.
> "I didn't say that every employee at all 150 organization..."
True, but you did seem to imply that all 150 organizations had at least one employee trying to disprove AGW at least some of the time. But a university that gets a $5k grant every other year from Exxon - sufficient to make the list - is making less off that grant than it does from the average student, so your claim was trivially false. The claim of "150 organizations" is hyperbole. If you claimed that, say, "a dozen" organizations were doing that it would at least be plausible, but then you'd have to do the work to identify which ones you're making the claim about; the list you point to is itself FUD and essentially useless in that regard.
> "If the actors in (a) are wrong, they lose standing in the scientific community, and in the case of scientific misconduct could very well lose their jobs"
Being wrong does not constitute scientific misconduct; it is very hard to imagine an academic losing their job for that. Scientists are wrong all the time; it means nothing. It's a chance to write another paper correcting the error, further padding the CV. (Again, see the link I gave for "most published research findings are false")
Even if you can find a few AEI, Cato, or Heritage foundation "studies" that genuinely try to participate in scientific debate on AGW (and I would be surprised if you could find more than one or two) I think you'll agree that the vast majority of the work of these organizations does no such thing. For some reason, AEI + co. seem more interested in convincing lay people that AGW doesn't exist than actually trying to figure out whether or not it does.
Scientists who are pro-AGW (the people I'm advocating we listen to) do not trade in citation-free commentary, even if they produce it for P.R. reasons. Their trade takes place subject to anonymous peer review and strict standards of evidence. A problem with AEI and friends is in part that they blur the line between scholarly and not scholarly work, putting out publications that have a few citations, but not engaged in a good faith attempt to figure out what's actually going on.
It looks like this debate is no longer about AGW per se, but instead on the reliability of the scientific process as a whole: It's not entirely clear what you mean by "most published articles are false". First, you're using a single article to back up a claim that the article itself undercuts to an extent. In fact, that article is making a very particular claim about the existence of alleged relationships. Genuinely good results are obviously good and aren't at all likely to be "false", and there are plenty of these, even if they're a minority. This is what is meant by working with the "best science". Like in everything else, most science is only of marginal use, but the subset that is useful is extremely useful and people can fairly easily recognize which is which.
I was very careful to separate misconduct from being wrong. Misconduct gets you fired. When you're stupendously and regularly right people want collaborate with you and fly you to their conferences. Less so with the anti-AGW crowd, in which I would guess good and prolific writing (irrespective of overall correctness or fairness) makes one popular.
> Scientists are wrong all the time; it means nothing.
This is so obviously ridiculous it hardly bears a response. If being wrong means nothing, then being right means nothing, and this can't be true. It's the job of an academic to be right about "new" out-on-a-limb things -- it's what they do. You could similarly conclude that because concert pianists play more wrong notes than the average person they must be bad at piano.
For some reason, anti-AGW people seem to believe that pro-AGW people either (1) want AGW to be taking place, or (2) want everyone to start living in communes ASAP. Neither of these is true. First, unlike the "disappointment" [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/apr/6/20060406-1121...] expressed over not finding WMD in Iraq, I don't know any pro-AGW person who will be similarly disappointed if the mean planet temperature stays roughly the same. Second, climate change scientists are normal people leading normal lives, if perhaps bicycling a little more frequently -- they don't in the aggregate want everyone to become hippies.
With respect to the 150 orgs -- I said what I said: they work (or did work) to make sure they continue(d) to be funded by corporations that stand(/stood) to lose if there is a carbon tax or somesuch. This doesn't mean they're spending all their time writing papers denying AGW -- at the very least they are engaged in fundraising, too. Regardless, how many well-funded organizations, acting in bad faith, would it take to produce enough FUD to change US public policy?
> It's not entirely clear what you mean by "most published articles are false"
I mean that most published research findings are false, for exactly the reasons detailed here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
You don't seem to have read the article, or you're missing the context it addresses. Of particular relevance to climate studies is that they tend to be looking for (a) a small effect size (b) in a popular field (c) with lots of money at stake and (d) a great deal of flexibility in experiment design and analysis methods - these are all aspects that suggest a higher-than average probability of false conclusions being reached.
> Genuinely good results are obviously good and aren't at all likely to be "false", and there are plenty of these, even if they're a minority.
I don't know how you are defining some results as "genuinely good" or "obviously good" - how would one test that? I question the assertion that these are useful categories. All scientific results are tentative and can be overturned by later results. "Obviousness" isn't something one can judge other than much much later in retrospect.
Regarding being wrong, the most damning aspect of the Hockey Team has been their inability to admit error. If you can't admit ever having made a mistake, you can't learn from your errors and make the study better next time. Of the two sides, my impression is that the skeptics have been more willing to admit and evaluate the possibility of error and more willing to explore other hypotheses. And also willing to say "we don't know" when that's the best answer. True, part of that comes from being outside the mainstream so there's less at stake. But another part is that CAGW isn't really a scientific position - it more closely resembles a religion. (Infallibility is a more popular attribute among the faithful than it is among the scientifically minded.) Again and again we see data sets used inappropriately on the grounds that doing so produces the right answer - that's just not science. You can't arbitrarily flip and crop Mia Tiljander's sediment series or search through Graybill bristlecones until you find some that have the right shape, and then use the shape they produce as evidence for your theory.
You're right, I'm pretty sure pro-AGW people do at some level want it to be taking place. They do so because threats to humanity are exciting. Humans have a need to be involved and worried about threats and there just aren't enough real threats to worry about in modern life. Centuries ago, people were too busy scrabbling for food or fighting in wars or fighting diseases to be worried about anything so obscure and distant. Worrying that things might get ever-so-slightly warmer a century from now, that water levels might be ever-so-slightly higher then than now, that we might need to plant different crops or observe a different mix of wildlife ...is a huge luxury.