Thursday
Mar182010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Economist on global warming
Mar 18, 2010 Climate: CRU Media The Economist adds its considerable voice to the throng of those calling on the public to "move along" because there's nothing to see here. It seems that action is required on global warming not because we are certain of the science but because we are not.
Huh?
There's an editorial here and a briefing here, the latter covering the Hockey Stick story and making all the usual claims about the NAS panel.
Reader Comments (72)
If they apply this sort of 'thinking' to their investment advice, The conomist will soon be out of business.
There definitely seems to be a coordinated effort to increase the alarmist propaganda.
I suspect there is a concerted effort, perhaps many such. Let us be generous, and suppose that some are 'concerting' because they really believe they are saving the planet. If you felt that, and had been hit by the setbacks the alarmist campaign has recently received, you might do the same. You might, that is, if you had completely abandoned the scientific method, Occam's Razor, and even just plain common sense, in order to stay aboard the wagon that has given you such a heady ride to date.
Avoiding losing face over publicly-declared positions seems to be a powerful motivator, so some of the concerts will be helped by that.
Others are simply explicable by the 'we're on to a good thing here, let's try and keep it going a bit further' argument from material self-interest.
In any event, the work for we good guys is not yet over...Cue 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' theme tune.
But their position has moved. They are slowly moving towards a skeptical position - glaciers don't melt over night ;)
One wonders what audience The Economist thinks it is addressing. To endlessly re-assert specious hypotheses based on self-evidently spurious data is a recipe for progressively discrediting the very propaganda that climate hysterics regurgitate at every opportunity.
Over some years now, Warmist rants have demonstrably lost all semblance of reality. Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. forget that nature takes her course. Regardless of these fatuous Luddites' sociopathic agenda, the truth will out. Since linear extrapolations of complex dynamic systems are mathematically and physically impossible, nothing the Green Gang spouts need be accorded any credibility whatever.
Were Matt Ridley still science editor at the Economist?????
The main article is long and no doubt deserving of a careful fisking but one has to hand it to the Economist headline writer, who gets it exactly right:
You either get the reference or you don't. If not, Google and Wikipedia will soon help. A little more meditation, a little less action, as Elvis didn't quite say? Sounds a very reasonable response to me.
I think it's clear by now that there is a concerted push on a lot of fronts to put forward an extraordinary and unprecedented argument from ignorance to try to justify a continuation and intensification of disastrous policy choices that we are all very familiar with. But note that the argument from ignorance is new. That is due entirely to Climategate and its sequels. What a pathetic thing. Esteemed organs like The Economist need to consider who much they are risking in the public mind by aligning themselves with something so ridiculous.
My hunch is that, for many of us, it's best to let the tide of propaganda wash over us and wait until it's spent, exhausted and see where we are. No need for everyone to fisk every paragraph for there is bound to be masses of repetition. The weak spots will be much easier to find this time. Based on the latest Populus poll just pointed out to Frank O'Dwyer 74% of Brits have already switched off the catastrophist button. I see this as mainly trying to shore up the remaining 26%, to prevent further defections. We'll have to see.
"It seems that action is required on global warming not because we are certain of the science but because we are not."
Well, ah, yes, but that's not quite what is being said. The pioint comes from a paper by a bloke called Weizman.
The Economist is starting from the position where I guess I roughly am. Yes, there's something going on, we're causing it and yet, the really important thing that we'd like to know but don't as yet is how bad is it going to get?
What is climate sensitivity in other words?
It might be less than zero for example. Unlikely, but it's sorta possible that soil will absorb more carbon through higher plant growth than is being pumped out.
Or it might be that 6 Degress that Mark Lynas wibbles on about. Also highly unlikely.
What Weizman did was point out that the greater the uncertainty of the effects the more we should be willing to do something about it. If there's a one in a million chance that climate change will kill civilisation in any one year forget about it. We've more chance of being wiped out by an asteroid. If there's a one in 100,000 chance then we'd be willing to do a few little things....if one in 1,000 then quite a lot and at one in 2 we'd be willing to do an enormous amount to prevent it.
And the greater the uncertainty of which is the correct probability there then the more we'd be rationally willing to do.
That's how you get from "more uncertainty" to "more action".
All of the above doesn't change my view that what it is being suggested that we do is near insane of course. You can make a very good case that by the injunctions of he Stern Review we in the UK have already solved the problem, that Europe as a whole is probably already doing too much (as Richard Tol points out).
Tim, I don't know how often you chip in here but I learned from Matt Ridley recently that you put our esteemed host onto a sceptical trail vis-a-vis global warming in 2005 - so many congratulations for that.
It's scary fascinating watching deniers go from "the science is not 100% certain" to "let's do nothing!".
The science is settled as far as humans are pumping billions of tons of CO2 in to the atmosphere every year and that is heating the planet. The estimates of where that is heading range from very expensive to devastating to society-ending. But you deniers want to do nothing except wait and see.
If only you could all be shipped off to your own planet and allowed to pollute that just so you can continue consuming right now. It'd be worth it to watch you poison yourselves and look surprised as the last of you died.
Coordinated mediaspeak is not unprecedented:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/06/papers-copenhagen-leader
JackM, I'd love to debate you on uncertainty. It's true to say that "the science is not 100% certain". But this statement is consistent with "the science is only 0.01% certain". And then there's the little matter of what it's 0.01% certain about. I think you need to be more specific.
The other side is the effect of so-called mitigation. One thing not mentioned at all by the Economist - and generally forgotten in the current debate - is biofuels. Major subsidies and incentives for biofuel production came in, all based on the 'settled science'' attributing dangerous global warming many years in the future to CO2 emissions now, so the land producing food reduced and the price of food doubled. This of course is not a major problem for you and me. But for the poorest in the world it's close to a disaster. Already. Done deal.
When you mock us 'deniers' as wanting no action, do you ever think about the biofuels debacle, which we opposed from the start? Who was proved right in that case? Or was the human suffering, already, totally worth it, in your eyes? How much have biofuels reduced the globally averaged temperature anomaly we are going to experience in 2100? How sure are you of that? The suffering from a doubling of food prices has already happened, remember. How do you square such things not just in your mind but in your conscience?
And then there's the push to reduce carbon emissions, which mean among many other things that those who are without electricity in this world - some say it's only 1.5 billion - are very unlikely to be allowed to use coal to power themselves out of that dire situation. How do you put a price on such a policy? How certain and imminent does disaster have to be, for you to pull the trigger on such a disastrous policy?
A bit more detail, that's all I'm asking.
And for this, I get called a denier.
I continue to say that that term is a disgrace, by the way. But I'd still like the details. Thank you.
"Were Matt Ridley still science editor at the Economist?????"
j ferguson
If only. Don't think he's been on the Economist staff for more than 20 years.
Dearest JackM,
As a long time skeptic, dating back to circa 1994, I would be happy to accept that you really believe that banishment is a fit punishment for doubting our betters . . . the very instant you deny yourself the very things you want to deny me:
you unplug your computer,
you do without heat in the winter and light in the evenings,
you have all of your vehicles compacted,
and you never buy anything that wasn't grown or raised within a days walk of your house.
Otherwise you're just spouting propaganda. And pretty tired stuff at that.
The briefing is an interesting article, definitely a step change from the standard post climategate articles to appear in the MSM. Obviously coming from the position of the concensus, but once I saw it early avoided the meally mouthed stuff about there being just one teeny-tiny error from the IPCC I could stomach reading the rest ;)
I was intrigued that when dealing with aerosols - something that has always seemed to me a magic explantory for any problems in climate models - the article says
JackM.
Here's a thought, what if it's not CO2?
What if we take all the measures that you cultists want us to and it turns out that we've backed the wrong horse. What then?
@JackM
Too much hyperbole doesn't do your cause any good at all. Yes, we're "pumping" "billions" of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. But that's still only a minuscule amount in the overall scheme of things.
If it was "heating the planet" to the devastating effect you imply, then how come the latest warming has (a) been no greater than previous periods of warming and (b) has occurred at almost exactly the same rate as previous warming spells in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Oh, and how come warming has apparently taken a holiday over the past decade or so whereas CO2 emissions are continuing to rise?
You estimate the effects of "doing nothing" as ranging from "very expensive to devastating to society-ending". I wonder if you're aware that the costs of "doing something" START at $45 trillion, according to the eco-fascists at the UN? If we in the West are foolish enough to actually implement the UN's plan, the outcome will certainly be devastating and society-ending vis-a-vis our economies and the well-being of our populations.
JackM
Do you know (without looking it up) what proportion of the atmosphere comprises CO2? How do you think it compares with, say, water vapour, in the warming stakes? And, as TT has also asked, why do you think it was just as warm (if not warmer) 1000 years ago, and 1000 years before that?
Both JackM and the Economist seem to miss the important point completely. Very little of the 'actions' in train at present will do anything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That £45T or whatever will achieve precisely nothing in terms of reduction. It will however condemn millions to poverty, starvation, expoitation and death. At the same time the wealthy will become moreso, and the powerful ditto. The common man, in all parts of the world, will be in chains. That's the real crime here. Adaptation is (relatively) cheap, effective and what human beings are funamentally good at. Lomborg is right,
Tim Worstall,
Climate sensitivity is the response to a sustained doubling of CO2, so the mechanism you describe (in which a sustained doubling of CO2 leads to more than halving its initial value) is more incoherent than it is unlikely.
You need some other negative feedback to get what you want. It is in principle possible I suppose however if such a thing existed it would make the ice ages inexplicable. (Of course according to the evidence a value less than zero is unlikely and so is a value less than 1.5)
The six degrees Mark Lynas 'wibbles on about' is not climate sensitivity either - it is an overall warming from whatever source.
You're confusing overall warming with the CO2 sensitivity - which again is the response to doubling CO2, but there is no reason to suppose we will stop at doubling CO2. We might triple or even close to quadruple it. If climate sensitivity is 3C then 4xCO2 = 6 degrees.
And it so happens that 3C is not considered 'very unlikely' but rather the most likely estimate we have from multiple lines of evidence to date. Nor do you need 6 degrees of warming to have big problems.
Yes exactly.
I could see how this might be true for some categories such as air travel and petrol. But all CO2 emissions (including from coal and for that matter indirect emissions via imported consumer goods from China etc)? Really?
Surely the proof of the pudding would be that in 'doing too much' we'd at least succeeded in stabilising our emissions at some level. Any evidence of that?
The phrase "flies round shite" comes to mind.
Frank, the issue is feedbacks and total sensitivity, as you know. Double CO2, and if all other things are equal, you will warm the planet by 1 degree C. If there is positive feedback to warming forcings, this, like any other forcing, could raise the temp by a total of 4-6 degrees, as alarmists suggest.
If there is negative feedback, it could have a much lower effect, anything from zero to 1 degree.
There is no evidence, none, that the planetary climate responds to small warmings by amplifying them. What this theory cannot explain is reversion from warmings to a cooler mean - the RWP, the MWP. Even the coolings after the thirties warm period.
The argument from uncertainty is a form of Pascal's wager and equally illegitimate. It would justify having the entire population pray an hour a day. It just might save them all from hell. Surely if there is the smallest chance that it would, it should be tried?
The main negative feedback that seems likely is clouds and tropical storms. As to explaining the ice ages, well, CO2 and climate sensitivities of 4 or so don't do that anyway. Its a problem. But its not about CO2 or AGW.
Follow the money folks:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/breaking_the_obama_code_the_gr.html
JackM uses words like 'pollute' and 'poison' for one of the most important trace gases. And there is bilions and billions of the stuff...
It is like a communist slogan "Intelligentsia pollutes the workers! ".
Reminds me of the disinfectant adverts that frigthen women with darling little babies crawling over the kitchen floor. "GERMS! BILLIONS! INVISIBLE! OUT TO KILL YOUR BABY!" much more different than, "bacteria comes in many forms, whilst it is true that some are harmful, many are neutral and some are beneficial. Disinfectant much like antibiotics kills them all."
They will have to do better than that in the future with their tactics. Even the ASA, the arch frightening authority for the media, acknowledges that to some degree. Though of course because they have been running disinfectant adverts for the last 30 years, they saw no problem with the Government's "drowning dog" advert.
The economist is simply hedging its bets and trying not to stir up the pot too much. What is interesting is the concession that there is a lot of uncertainty.
Note that the Economist almost never does any investigative scientific journalism (except maybe where Berlusconi is concerned) and so does not have the means to form a truly independent view on the science. It simply combines views and then comes up with some "weighted average". Not quite how science works!
As someone who has read the Economist weekly since my teens(!), I can only comment that while they write with a style that suggests a certain level of authority, they are not always right. Indeed, I have found that when they write about areas in which I am an expert, they sometimes get it quite wrong. Makes me wonder about the areas in which I am not an expert!
It is one of those magazines where the high quality of the writing makes you assume (erroneously) that the opinion is also high quality!
Ooops ! Please ignore the Berlusconi reference from my comment. Nothing scientific to investigate there except perhaps his new follicles!
Plot economist vs climatologist. Or, economic math modelling techniques with those of climate math modelling. Statistically significant correlation, anyone?
How many of the oft quoted world's most eminent climate change "scientists" and assorted champions are in fact economists?
The most interesting contribution to AGW that I've come across from economists are from the authors of Freakonomics, and not the mainstream economists, who tend toward the overwhelming consensus school of thought.
Let us not forget, economists' track record on predicting the future of complex systems is not significantly better or worse than the climatologists'. And the many reasons that one dismal science fails in this regard may also tell us why the other is likely to fair no better.
If you're driving in a snowstorm, wyoudl you reduce speed?
Well then.
Indeed, uncertainty (in the face of a credible threat) leads to a greater risk.
See this nice post making this same point: http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/06/uncertainty-does-not-call-for-inaction.html
"Rational behavior is risk weighted. What is widely missed is that the less confidence you have in climate science, the less the risks are constrained and thus the more you should be weighing the severe risks in your risk-weighted decisions."
Enjoyed yr blog BV and your evenhandedness. But if you slow down whilst driving in a snowstorm that does not impact anyone else negatively. However, as many other commenters have noted, reducing CO2 levels will have zero impact as long as India and China are not onboard, and, with a very high degree of certainty, will be a severe risk to the third world.
BV, you would reduce speed, but only if you were sure that to do so would not also harm those behind you. The problem is that only one solution, that of heavily curtailing CO2 emission, is being touted. The observational evidence is that the case for the models is not proven (Lucia has good recent posts on this) and the effects are minimal anyway (no extra hurricanes, sea level rise slowing etc etc). Any logical economic argument with any serious foundation would have to come out on the side of adaptation as and when. The policies of CO2 restriction being promoted heavily consist (to push your analogy a little) of beng in the snowstorm on the motorway in heavy traffic and stamping on the brakes. Not only you, but a good chunk of the poor dabs behind you are going to suffer badly.
As a lay doubter I remain unconvinced by the IPCC case and the remedies it proposes. I think the Climate Act is daft and the vast sums spent to propagandise the AGW a scandalous waste of our taxes. The Economist article was an interesting discussion of the subject, but its conclusion was lame and unsupported.
I remain interested in the analysis of the temperature record that is being undertaken by EM Smith here: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
He is raising many good questions. I liked a recent one which asked why Guyana reveals warming temperature , yet the adjacent French Guiana and Suriname remain flat/slightly cooling. The benefit of his analysis is that it draws directly on the reported temperatures and does not alter it by the adjustments, infilling or homogenising which is applied to the official anomaly record that is fed to us.
Ok, so then imagine a huge bus where each individual has some control over the car, but not nearly enough to by themselves make a noticeable dent in the speed. In a snowstorm. What would you do? Pointing fingers at others who have pink glasses on and don’t even notice the snow?
The situation is different still. The effects of your driving behavior mostly affect others (in the future and at other (mostly poorer) places.
So imagine (it’s getting rather hypothetical I admit) that the group of people is controlling a bus in which other people are sitting. Perhaps a future grandchild of yours. Perhaps people you don’t know. Not trying to reduce speed puts the people in the bus at risk, but it hardly affects your life. Tricky.
You can try your individual best. You can try to negotiate with others about a collective effort (scary word, I realize). You can say I don’t care. You can put your own pink glasses on. You can discuss whether the snow is really occurring, or whether it’s all that bad. Each choice of action will have a different effect on the risk of those in the bus, for the better or the worse. But indeed, all by yourself you won’t be able to get the bus to what is considered a safe speed.
I also have a feeling that the thesis that emission reductions will affect others negatively is a bit overblown. Yes, it will cost us. But no, it won’t wreck the economy. It may if we leave it until the last moment to do something about.
David Keith shows that we can make near-zero emissions power today. Cost: a few % of GDP. In the rich countries that is:
Similar to the cost of all other environmental controls
A bit more that current military spending
Many times smaller than the cost of health care
A good years GDP growth
Adaptation will certainly be needed. But not in order to replace mitigation. The damage of 70 mph bus crash is likely much larger than the damage from a 40 mph bus crash. To a certain extent adaptation may not even be possible anymore. There are limits to what you can adapt to.
"Rational behavior is risk weighted. What is widely missed is that the less confidence you have in climate science, the less the risks are constrained and thus the more you should be weighing the severe risks in your risk-weighted decisions."
The same applies to the possibility of eternal damnation through not accepting the Christian, or Muslim, religion....
The less confidence you have, the more you should believe. You really, really don't want eternal damnation, do you?
Bart, useful though your original metaphor was, I think you're now torturing it well beyond its design spec :)
The position you take in your latest post also begs the question of what the effect is. You have some position to argue from if one assumes that the subsequent calamities are highly or very likely, but they are (from observation) not looking that way. Increasingly it looks that the probabilities of catastrophe are reducing. So the rush to mitigate overwhelming calamity will be quite the wrong thing to do.
If people were as wound up and active about the poor and starving of our world today as they are about how my grandchildren are going to keep cool, I might have more sympathy.
Rush?
We knew what we know today (though with less certainty of course) 30 years ago: That increasing CO2 emissions would lead to the warming of the globe.
In a rational decision making framework, we would have slowly started reducing our emissions long ago.
We're like the smoker who doesn't listen to his doctor's advice and instead just waits until he's in the hospital. Stopping smking at that point doesn't give him hi life expectancy back though.
Amen.
If there's one eight minute contribution to the global warming debate in the last five years that I think everyone from all sides should take time to watch it's Michael Crichton at the Intelligence Squared debate in New York on 14 March 2007. Everything Crichton says is important but what counts for me is the way he almost breaks down at the end as he tries to make the same point as Cumbrian Lad here ...
It isn't a laughing matter that we put a very marginal difference in prosperity of future generations in the developing world - they will only be eight times more prosperous today in a hundred years rather than nine times more, so the IPCC says, if we don't cut our CO2 - ahead of their great grandparents that are in such dire need now. And it's a massive concern that the IPPC and Stern seem to gravely underestimate the impact today of our 'mitigation' attempts on those people and their attempts to better their lives. That for me is just another manifestation of our lack of care. And don't tell me that transferring billions to governments will ever be as good as poor families being able to buy the cheapest possible electricity for themselves (and other such essentials). Read Dambisa Moyo or Paul Collier or anyone who's really bothered to look at such issues. We could devastate those most at risk already in this precious shared world - and with biofuels and emissions restrictions (and with the DDT ban before them, about which you'll again find Dr Crichton speaking passionately very easily on YouTube) we have already begun to do exactly that.
Bart, the wheels on the AGW bus are coming off but it could still career out of control and do massive damage to the other road users. As others have said, though, the driving over on your blog seems to be have been exemplary. We're very grateful for that. We do understand and acknowledge that there are people of good conscience on all sides of this debate. It's just good to find one.
I thought The Economist was supposed to be a respectable journal...the same for Nature. Climategate has really brought out the biases. The Economist is regurgitating past excuses. These lame excuses are becoming passe. Where's the value in this analysis?
I'm growing tired of the bull$hit excuse that science is supposed to make mistakes and learn from them. That is what science is...it's all part of the scientific process. All of a sudden collusion, stone-walling, data manipulation, book cooking getting caught is part of the scientific process of making mistakes.
I'm gonna use an excuse like this the next time I rob a bank and get caught. "Oh officer, I was just testing the integrity of the banks security system. Seems to be working just fine...have a nice day."
Bart,
Surely the only rational course of action when faced by uncertainty is to act to reduce the uncertainty.
The less confidence you have in climate science, the more you should be seeking to improve its quality.
Bart,
A better analogy is this. We are all in a bus called "the world economy". Some people want to stay on the bus and drive it themselves while forcing everyone else to get off the bus. Al Gore, Raj Pachauri, Prince Charles, Miliband, etc.
The danger ahead is not snow - something we have all seen and felt. No: the reason for forcing us off the bus is "aliens in the road ahead" Not something we have seen outside of a computer game, but very scary and horrible and just think of the children, and oh the humanity and what about the polar bears and the vulnerable [is this enough ?]
Bart,
You pull out and play one of the standard cards in the debate “the precautionary principle. There is a certain amount of truth in the precautionary principle that unknowns are in fact dangerous”. However, it should be noted that rational decision makers are always faced with tradeoffs. We do the best we can to determine relative risk versus relative reward and pull the trigger on a decision.
The problem that I have with progressives and many environmentalists ( and honestly with your argument here ) is that the algorithm applied really looks like the following:
1. Show valid risk in choice A
2. Create strawman to either downplay the risk in choice B or exaggerate rewards in choice A
3. Claim that by the precautionary principle we should surely choose A
Let’s look at your car slowing down example. You choose a dangerous situation as situation A then deliberately choose a choice B with little or no reward. Well obviously in this case we want to choose choice A. Then with just a little “slight of brain”, we generalize this to the climate debate and strawman the argument.
Now in the following case I am perfectly cognizant of the fact that I am creating a strawman, but it is at least as valid as yours. I can easily take your reasoning and turn it right back on you.
1. We know governments can become despotic by seeking excuses to control civil liberties as this has happened many times in the past.
2. We can see by the death toll caused by despotic governments dwarf deaths caused by environmental issues
Thus by the precautionary principle we should do absolutely nothing until we are 100% sure that no civil liberties will be violated.
Honestly not a very convincing argument, but exactly congruent to the one you are making. I hate to break it to you, but revamping the economy has significant risk as does other aspects of programs to combat climate change. You can downplay this, but it feels a lot like rationalization to me. I can be convinced, but it is going to take real data and theory presented in an honest and straightforward fashion. Good science presented in a spin free fashion would go a long way, but there seems to be a real absence of that. Perhaps if Dr. Curry gets her way, we might have more constructive discussions in the future.
Now to a certain extent I sympathize. CO2 emissions are a true externality and as such should probably be regulated as such. Arguing “we don’t know so we have to do something” is not going to get you very far however. There are always problems to fix and your warming problems seem “lost in the noise” if there are problems in the world, perhaps I should start by fixing the ones I can actually conclusively detect and know how to combat? We only have so many resources: the zero cost argument fails.
The precautionary principle is itself a poor tool as can be seen by other avenues of debate. Do you see this reasoning being applied to the TARP or healthcare in the US ? Honestly TARP may be the single biggest threat to the well being of my children's lives yet. Bad things happen when economies or societies collapse, and no matter how you slice it, that is a risk (even if you think it is a small and distant one). Do you see those same forces arguing the precautionary principle in that case ? Seems to me the precautionary principle is just a nice tool for rationalizing what you already believe.
"In a rational decision making framework, we would have slowly started reducing our emissions long ago."
With St Augustine, we would have wished for God to make us good, but not yet. We are all at risk of eternal damnation, we do not know how great that risk is, but the less certain we are, the more it behooves us to believe and so minmize the risk.
We should have started believing a long time ago, if only we could have figured out what to believe in. But it is not too late. Pick the right thing, and believe in it, and you might avoid damnation.
You do want to avoid it, don't you?
You see the problem. Belief without knowing what is like doing something, without knowing what, to reduce warming. Why reduce CO2? Why believe in Christianity? Why not stand on our heads? Or convert to Islam? Or maybe Buddhism?
The argument is of the form, we must do something, this is something, lets do it. Ridiculous.
michel,
'...Why not stand on our heads? '
I tried that reading Tijlander.....
As for the "considerable voice" of the Economist. At one point of my life I have read the Economist from cover to cover for over ten years. Then I have stopped for it became clear that this newspaper is all style and no content. But for shear pretensions it has no equal.
The Economist used to be my favorite source of news and general information - more or less until 2006, when John Micklethwait replaced Bill Emmott as editor. Emmott was a true skeptic in the best sense of the term, that is, he knew better than just assume that mainstream opinion is true. He proved that with his book "The Sun Also Sets" which in the mid-1980s challenged the then-predominant notion that Japan was an invincible economic superpower. So, it was also during Emmott's time that The Economist supported Bjorn Lomborg. At that time, rightly or wrongly, they could not be accused of following the mainstream.
John Micklethwait, however, became editor in 2006 with a clear intention - or mandate - to make the magazine more mainstream - particularly as a reaction to Emmott's editorial support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has succeeded - The Economist has become so boringly mainstream that these days I buy it mostly out of habit. There is really no reason to read it anymore, it has become a dumbed-down weekly.
On global warming, Bill Emmott has stated that his view and positions are close to Lord Lawson's, John Micklethwait seems to have thought that in this, too, they needed to become clearly mainstream - especially because gobal warming is what clever people believe, and don't they write for clever people? This has put them into the ridiculous position of editoriallly defending the free market when discussing business generally but supporting draconian state intervention in the economy when it's about global warming - and seemingly unwilling to address the contradiction openly.
This latest editorial, and briefing, read like a desperate reaction, of the sort, as if John Micklethwait had said to his science editor, "but we thought the science was settled? What is going on? Are we beginning to look stupid? Quick, make us look clever again!". So they end up saying that uncertainty is an even stronger reason for draconian intervention in the economy - something that makes this decades-long Economist-reader cringe with embarrassment - and for the very first time they deign to look a bit deeply into what skeptics such as Lindzen and McIntyre and Watts are actually saying - only to mention that the NAS supported the hockey stick generally (one wonders if the author even understood what it was all about), and as usual no mention of the Wegman report.
The Economist has become a sad joke - not only regarding its focus on global warming. It's time for me to stop being sentimental and not bother about it anymore.
michel,
Can I take that as admission that the generally accepted range of 1.5 to 4C for 2xCO2 and most likely 3 is not alarmist?
Sure. But there is no evidence for such a feedback, and such negative feedbacks as are known to exist still put you in 1.5-4C territory. And if you want to talk about unknown feedbacks, those might be negative or positive. Even some candidates for negative feedback, like clouds, may in fact be positive (there is even some suggestive evidence that this is the case).
This claim is simply crazy and it's difficult to take you seriously when you make such a claim. If there really was no evidence for such a feedback, for example water vapor feedback, why did it even occur to anyone to look for it? If you pulled 100 physicists with no axe to grind out of a crowd, how many of them would agree with your statement? If water vapor feedback doesn't exist, why hasn't any 'sceptic' managed to show that, and why are so many scientists convinced it does exist? Why are there papers talking about the observational evidence for it?
Again a crazy claim. If the theory really were so tissue thin that it could be waved away by a data free argument of pure logic, don't you think some of the hundreds working on the problem would have spotted it?
No, because the point is it must be a credible threat. There is no evidence that hell exists while there is evidence that a dangerously warmer (or simply different) climate can exist (it's happened before), and there is evidence for the greenhouse effect - plus there are physically plausible mechanisms as to how we could bring about the dangerous scenario. [Another flaw in Pascal's wager is that it requires you to pray to the right god and further assumes that it won't fly into a rage at your insincerity]
We know that we are adapted to our current climate and it is also a known fact that CO2 emissions have enhanced the greenhouse effect - this is empirically confirmed by observations of earth's radiation from space. The question then is how much. And you either sign on the dotted line for the standard climate sensitivity of 3C or you argue for uncertainty - in which case it can be anything from (being charitable) 0 to 6+C (not very likely perhaps, but then neither is zero).
To take an analogy let's suppose you were playing russian roulette and handed a revolver with 0 to 6 bullets in the chamber. You're told that most experts reckon there is 3 bullets in the gun. Presumably you will agree that pointing the gun at your head and pulling the trigger isn't a safe thing to do.
Now you're told that some experts say there is 0 bullets in the gun, and some say there is as many as 6. Some even argue that a gunshot to the head is survivable, some say it is beneficial, some say that the notion that guns are lethal is a conspiracy or made up propaganda put about by crybaby cheese eating liberals. Does that make you more safe or less safe?
[note: I have deliberately skewed this analogy to favor the 'sceptic' side, as if we are headed for 1000ppm then it's more like most experts tell us the gun has 6 bullets in it]
March 19, 2010 | Frank O'Dwyer
Fortunately, I live in a place where gun-ownership is not illegal and a fundamental understanding of firearms is expected.
Understanding #1: MY firearm is always loaded.
Understanding #2: If it is not YOUR firearm, presume it is loaded.
Understanding #3: After ejecting the magazine, always force back the slide: only idiots with a death wish don't keep one "up-the-spout"
Understanding #4: Someone who asks if you feel lucky is not your friend and may not be playing with a full deck.
Understanding #5: People who use fire-arm analogies when discussing global warming fall into the same classification as those in Understanding #4
Finally, keep in mind that people who support doing something now about AGW also support doing something now about firearm violence and will tell you that your fellow citizens can NOT be trusted.
Good night, Frank.
No, there is no evidence for it. There is no evidence that there is a straightforward link between a warming climate forcing, and a long term warming. In the same way, there is no evidence of a straightforward link between a warming forcing from my morning coffee, and a long term warming of the body of michel.
No. There is no evidence that the climate responds to forcings of the order of 1C value, other things being equal, by amplifying them long term. There is no reason to conclude from this that the range of uncertainty about such sensitivity must be higher than 1C.
Tto see this, take the argument, which is of an identically silly form: you doubt that drinking your coffee will raise your temperature through the day. That is because you do not understand that the body of michel amplifies any warming it gets from what it ingests. You think there is negative feedback which will cause michel to stabilize. OK, well that shows he should be even more careful about that coffee, because it shows it may not raise the temperature by 1C, as I just suggested, it may raise by far more.
The argument is, there is no reason to think that the forcing from CO2 will have any warming effect. It is not a consequence of this argument that it may have a huge warming effect. Climate science discussions are not exempt from the requirement to have conclusions follow from premisses.
The argument from water vapor is confused. No-one doubts that water vapor absorbs IR. The question is whether a small warming forcing and subsequent small rise in temperature will cause the water vapor effect to increase long term and stay high. Where is the evidence that warming forcings have previously done that, or will do that in the future?
The post also contains an argument from authority, 100s of scientists cannot be wrong. Yes they can. When the history of AGW is written, it will be as part of the history of mass group delusions, along with Eugenics and Lysenkoism. Or, in politics and economics, Marxism. Let us face it, masses of very intelligent people really believed that there were laws of history, and that they followed some incoherent logic called a 'dialectic'. Hundreds of millions are dead in consequence of movements based on this silliness. People, especially in groups, can get it catastrophically wrong.
If you cannot explain what caused the RWP and MWP, and what caused the coolings which followed, you do not understand climate sensitivity enough to put a number or a range on it. In such circumstances to advocate CO2 limitation as a way of controlling climate is exactly as rational as advocating standing on one's head.
To then advocate cap-and-trade as a means of limiting CO2, or windmills, or biofuels, is like advocating jumping up and down as a way of getting into the on-the-head position. It is to compound an irrelevancy by an insanity.
My real nightmare is about the island of Tonga. There is a very small chance that the government of this little island has developed weapons of mass destruction which it has concealed from the rest of the world, and is preparing to unleash them on us, in a form which will lead to the end of civilization.
You will say there is no evidence for this. No, this just shows how diabolically clever they have been about their concealment of the program.
You will say there is no proof that these weapons exist. I reply that the more uncertain we are, the greater the range of possibilities is, and that this uncertainty means we have to take account of the possibility that Tonga may not only wipe out civilization, but actually could extinguish life on earth.
I am engaging in a letter writing campaign, in which I hope you will all join me, whose aim is for us to Nuke Tonga Now. The future of the human race is at stake, and we must Think of the Children. It is only venal scoundrels with poor personal hygiene funded by Exxon who doubt the necessity of this.
michel,
Here is some evidence for water vapor feedback.
So let's have no more 'there's no evidence for it'. There is evidence that water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and there is evidence that it is a function of temperature. Again, where do you think that people got the idea if it wasn't physically plausible? And in a world full of 'sceptics' and real sceptics (scientists), where do you get the notion that people haven't tried to test for it in observations in order to confirm or disprove it?
Strawman. Either you believe the scientific method is a reliable way to determine the truth about the world or you don't. If you do, then it is indeed true that a consensus among scientific experts is prima facie evidence that a given hypothesis is correct. It is certainly a silly rebuttal to say 'there is no evidence' - obviously most scientists have seen evidence that makes them conclude otherwise, and you need to explain why they are wrong, not merely assert that they might be. Nor is it a case of 100s of scientists can't be wrong - it's a case of 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet'.
That is a logically fallacious argument, like saying the existence of unsolved murders means that all convictions for murder are unsafe. Furthermore you take the existence of global MWP as established fact - it is an amazing double standard to say there is compelling evidence for that and not for water vapor feedback. Lastly it is simply your assertion that they can't explain past warmings and coolings, in fact they are able to explain them pretty well - perhaps you mean by CO2 forcing alone? If so that is a strawman, nobody says that CO2 is the only thing going on.
All I advocate is a revenue neutral carbon tax. Cap-and-trade is the next best thing - it's worked before for SO2 so why not CO2? If CO2 is the problem then what is your solution?