Thursday
Mar182010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Royal Society on uncertainty
Mar 18, 2010 Climate: Curry Climate: Statistics Royal Society The Royal Society is holding a series of discussions on uncertainty in science in a couple of weeks' time. The programme looks pretty interesting. Among the highlights are:
- Lord May on Science as organised scepticism
- Julia Slingo on Uncertainty in Weather and Climate Prediction
- Peter Webster on Uncertainty in predicting extremes of weather and climate
- Leonard Smith on Uncertainty, ambiguity and risk in forming climate policy
Judith Curry is then running the closing panel discussion and overview.
Unfortunately registration is now closed, but if anyone is going it would be great to get a report on the proceedings.
In the meantime the BBC is discussing the issue of uncertainty today. This will presumably be available on the iPlayer later on.
Reader Comments (35)
They've all learnt a new funding buzzword have they?
Speaking of funding, Chuckles.
Did you know the Royal Society relies for 68.2% of its income upon, what it euphemistically describes as, 'Parliamentary Grant in Aid'.
How 'independent' does that make this august institution?
Just a thought.........
Oh yes, all of the friends that money can buy.
I simply assume it is a given, but EuRef and Richard North seem to keep track of such things quite well for future accounting.
For a very revealing background to IPCC modeling, check out the 1999-2001 ECLAT series of seminars on Representing Uncertainty in Climate Models, organised by a certain Professor Mike Hulme. In 2000 Hulme set up the Tyndall Centre, which abandoned any pretence of allowing for uncertainty and became a major influence on government policy:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/eclat/
All are downloadable pdf’s.
Just a few choice selections…..
“Projecting the future state(s) of the world with respect to demographic, economic, social, and technological developments at a time scale consistent with climate change projections is a daunting task, some even consider as straightforward impossible.
Over a century time scale, current states and trends simply cannot be extrapolated. The only certainty is that the future will not be just more of the same of today, but will entail numerous surprises, novelties and discontinuities.
“The probability of occurrence of long-term trends is inversely proportional to the ‘expert’ consensus.”
“….excessive self-cite and “benchmarking” of modeling studies to existing scenarios creates the danger of artificially constructing “expert consensus””
That was two years after Kyoto, when current UK Defra chief scientific advisor and Director of Strategy at Tyndall, Bob Watson, then IPCC Chairman, had said the science was settled.
As a result of the ECLAT seminars, they became so worried at how uncertain everything was, that they decided the only thing to do was ignore it and boast of ever more robust climate models, because they didn’t want policy makers to think there was any doubt about global warming.
Funny though, eight years later, in 2007, Professor Lenny Smith, a statistician at the London School of Economics, warned about the “naïve realism” of current climate modelling. That’s eight years of ever more expansive and expensive computer systems and ever more complex models, giving rise to almost weekly calls of “new research suggests it’s worse than we thought.”
“Our models are being over-interpreted and misinterpreted,” he said. Over-interpretation of models is already leading to poor financial decision-making, Smith says. “We need to drop the pretence that they are nearly perfect.”
“He singled out for criticism the British government’s UK Climate Impacts Programme and Met Office. He accused both of making detailed climate projections for regions of the UK when global climate models disagree strongly about how climate change will affect the British Isles.” (From New Scientist magazine, 16 August 2007.)
I wonder what Smith's take will be now?
I think the theme song is “I can do MAGICC”…..
Brother Yertizz saith: "Did you know the Royal Society relies for 68.2% of its income upon, what it euphemistically describes as, 'Parliamentary Grant in Aid'. How 'independent' does that make this august institution?"
Well, just as independent as they dare. But how would you recommend they be funded, Brother Y? A gift shop in the lobby?
BaseballCricket caps with the R.S. logo? Ashtrays? Used book sales? Annual calendars featuring members au naturel? A casino? Associate memberships? A gift catalogue? A jumble sale? I eagerly await your suggestions. Perhaps His Grace hast some ideas, as well...jorge: Your point is? The RS should have lived within its means and not have lost its independence by selling out to government funding and government influence. Presumably there was a time when it used to manage without government money. When did it first start accepting danegeld?
Although focusing on medical science, the March 27 issue of ScienceNews has an article by Tom Siegfried titled 'Odds Are, It's Wrong - Science fails to face the shortcomings of statistics' which should give The Economist pause.
See www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/57091/title/Odds_are%2C_its_wrong
Jorge
Take a look at the Royal Society of Literature's website - they raise funds through sale of associate memberships and charitable donations. That's how to maintain independence. Contrast that with the Royal Society's website, which makes it pretty clear that they have become an arm of the state.
The "Royal" should just charge its Fellows a hefty annual subscription. The independence thereby bought would be a jewel beyond price.
Why no mention of the unassailable fact that Lorenz's Chaos Theory from 1964 proves that linear extrapolations of "complex dynamic systems" are not just statistically uncertain [outside 95% confidence intervals] but mathematically impossible? If the Royal Society is this ignorant of fundamental principle, what business has it sponsoring symposia that are scientifically meaningless by definition?
Brothers Phillip, David, et al: the point is, to take the Royal Society ("RS") from 2/3 governmental subsidy to zero is not only unlikely, but next to impossible even with their full cooperation. The RS has been short of funds on and off since the mid 18th Century and 'on the dole' since about the mid 19th C. "Independence," however desirable, would require a total reorganization. The RS is and has long been inextricably joined to the Government. Depoliticizing it would be a sisyphean task. The only likely way that will happen is if the Greens succeed in reducing the UK to woad-painted, wattle-and-daub-dwelling neodruids, first.
Uncertainty is belief based unlike probability that is rooted in mathematics or measurement.
Sadly, uncertainty and probability are becoming synonymous, thanks to the "everybody is entitled to their own facts", in our PNS world!
When a group votes 90:10 that catastrophic climate change is due to the activities of Man, it is then taken as axiomatic that this equates to a probability of 0.9. Without the objections of China this would have been P=0.95!!
Uncertainty, tainted beyond recognition from the understanding of an Heisenerg, has given us the moral rectitude of applying the Precautionary Principle as the "right thing to do" and the crusading spirit that ennobles the call for the incarceration, or worse, of questioners.
90% certainty= 0% uncertainty
Yertizz
If the UK Parliamentary Grants-in-aid" are like the annual grants given by Australian Government Departments to organisations such as institutes, think-tanks and peak body organisations then this is not a euphemism. It is normal practice here and the grants are untied as it were.
As the Australian Academy of Science states on its website, "it is an independent body but with government endorsement. It receives government grants towards its activities but has no statutory obligation to government."
One could argue that there is some element of 'He who pays the piper plays the tune' so that the largesse of the annual grants is maintained. However I suspect it is more a question that Government climate change policy is a gravy train for science.
What is disappointing is that peak science institutes uncritically support IPCC processes and reports.
20 years too late.
@John Blake and "complex dynamic systems"
To climate 'scientists' those words you write are invisible when read, silent when spoken.
Even people who live the simplest of lives (the term peasants is not pejorative in many societies) can understand that complex theory. People without access to education or communication, but who observe the world around them and who listen to their elders. They undersand nature. Yet put those words it in front of a climate 'scientist' and it is like it is written in the language of another dimension.
Read the Royal Society web site's take on global warming, there is absolutely no room for uncertainty there.
My take on this is that it's an attempt to mitigate the damage done to the IPCC AR4 it failing to show the uncertainties. I think Judith has a slightly different agenda, in that I believe she wants there to be more open discourse, and like many scientists, or other people for that matter, is disinclined to believe that even if the world does warm a little there must be some sort of upside.
I listened to Bob Watson yesterday talking on "uncertainty" it sounded to me as though he didn't have a scintilla of it.
Sorry, "disinclined to believe that even if the world does warm a little there must be some sort of upside"
Should have read:"inclined to believe that even if the world does warm a little there must be some sort of upside"
When I was at University and discussing which courses to take for the next year or whatever I said that I might take statistics and probability. I thought it was pretty funny but no one ever got the joke.
There is UN-certainty via the IPCC and there is actual un-certainty as decribed in a dictionary.
What this Royal Society discussions are about is to the turn the small 'un' back into a large 'UN' again.
You know what, the Royal Society and their members can stick their 'UNs' or 'uns' where the sun does not shine.
ClimateGate, IPCC errors, conflicts of interest, emissions trading frauds, and misleading government ads have done the damage.
What people are certain about is they were lied to, delibrately so, about the science of climate change, the impacts of climate change and the costs, economic, social and cultural of mitigating climate change.
Although picked up by the Financial Times and the Grauniad, so far the blogosphere seems not to have caught up with the Royal Academy of Engineering's release yesterday:-
http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/releases/shownews.htm?NewsID=553
The 2 Mb pdf download of the full report "Generating the Future" is available at the top of the Press Release.
I suggest this should be an essential read for everyone on here and, indeed, a thread on "uncertainty" may be the perfect place to flag it up.
Again, little uncertainty is in evidence about the 'robust', 'settled' climate science that we all know and love.
The only uncertainty seems to be which breathtakingly radical and expensive (and probably dangerous) set of policy decisions should be taken to achieve the 80% reduction in CO2 emissions demanded as now required by UK law (thanks to the 2008 Climate Change Act).
I was almost tempted to believe that this paper was actually subversive, an attempt to highlight just how bizarre, unaffordable and indeed unachievable are the raft of actions which
would have to be introduced to achieve this completely nonsensical emissions reduction.
But I fear that isn't the case. Perhaps some of the authors (all allegedly eminent engineers) may be at the "more homeopath than surgeon" end of the engineering profession, with titles like "Professor of Environmental Technology" or "Prince Philip Professor of Technology (sic!)" or "Professor of Engineering for Sustainable Development". But they don't appear to be wide eyed greenies who smoked too much weed when they were younger.
Their first "scenario" envisages building 80 Nuclear or Carbon Capture power plants AND 9,600 more onshore 2.5MW wind turbines AND 38 "London Arrays" (an array of 341 offshore turbines planned for the Thames Estuary) AND 25 Million 3.2 kW Solar Panels AND 1,000 miles of Pelamis machines (for wave power) AND 2,300 Tidal Stream turbines AND the largest proposed Severn Barage AND 1,000 Hydro Electric schemes AND and enormous increase in the use of Biomass AND capping electricity use at current levels by achieving fantastic domestic energy savings.
Other scenarios envisage swingeing, or positively draconian REDUCTIONS in electricity use (which would likely necessitate rebuilding half of the existing UK housing stock, although that seems to have escaped them). And a slightly reduced requirement for Nuclear and CCS plants but a similar "investment" in renewables.
One might have thought that anyone coming out with recommendations like these, pointing out that:-
"In technological terms there are no choices to be made – the demand is so large that every available technology will be needed as quickly as possible. The main problems for scenario 1 will be buildability and cost to the nation. With over 80 new nuclear or CCS power plants required – around two per year – along with vast increases in all forms of renewables, building the system would require an enormous effort, probably only achievable by monopolising most of the national wealth and resources."
- one might have thought they would have sat back in their chairs and wondered about the initial premise. Whether 80% reduction in CO2 emissions was actually such a good idea. Especially as there isn't a scintilla of a chance of the Chinese & Indians following suit.
This is where we have arrived at from Phil Jones and Jim Hansen's fiddled data. From Michael Mann's corrupt and incompetent statistics. From the 'Climate Modellers' dodgy algorithms, designed to demonstrate the 'truth' of their initial alarmist premise. From Pachauri and the IPCC's tendentious 'errors' and frauds. From HRH Prince Charles obsessive drivellings. From Al Gore's greed. From the Bankers' salivation at the thought of all that Carbon Trading.
Aren't we alright?
Regarding funding for the Royal Society. Maybe they could rent out their magnificent property and move somewhere else more appropriate in today's climate of austerity. If you should visit London go take a look at the location and desirability of their accommodation. However, maybe I'm wrong and they don't own it, merely occupy it. Still......
Oxonmoron,
I think their HQ is Crown Estates property, and it's just been done up so nicely for the new millenium, a bargain at 9.8 million quids worth of renovations, so I'm sure they're keen to stay there.
Not to be outdone on the property side, the Society snapped up Chicheley Hall near Milton Keynes in 2009, a bargain at 6.5 million. Oh, and being renovated at a further 7 million as a conference centre.
Martin, could it be that the Royal Academy of Engineering's report is actually a cool look at the implications of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions, inviting the reader to declare the project impossible without saying so themselves?
"...probably only achievable by monopolising most of the national wealth and resources..." would seem as close as they allow themselves to go without declaring a political stance.
Had they written: "This 80% target is pie in the sky, forget it, it ain't gonna happen! While we're at it, why not try for 90% or 105%?", the apocalypse brigade would be shrieking heresy.
King Canute, far from of foolishly believing that the advancing tide would retreat from his throne, was making a point: "If THIS is what we believe, and THIS is the consequent action, then THIS is where it'll get us." If I'm right, the Engineers are being canny.
Brent:
I have to hope you're right. If engineers actually believe this nonsense, then there is no future for any of us.
Looking up Leonard Smith I discovered his Climate Prediction project. Anyone here participating in that and what models? The project experiment has achieved more than 53 million model years to date!
Roger Penrose. Well since reading about the peer review process described in our host's book I have pictured it as Escher's Waterfall, a mill that feeds itself. Escher based the drawing on Penrose's Impossible Triangle.
John Barrow. There's an interesting reproduction in the Online Magazine of Israel Physical Society of a lecture he gave on the role of choas in highly complex systems. http://physicaplus.org.il/articles2/barrow_eng.html
Re: RAE - typical engineers: understated as ever! ;)
@Brent Hargreaves, @ Phillip Bratby
I sincerely hope you are both right. But there is a danger that you are allowing your judgement to be clouded by logic.
I am reminded of the Russian definition of the difference between a pessimist and an optimist.
According to this, a pessimist is someone who thinks things are going to get worse.
Whilst an optimist is someone who thinks things can't get any worse.
I fear that your interpretation of the authors' recommendations is most probably optimistic.
Slightly O/T with apologies, but I have just noticed the following announcement on the Geological Society's website, which till now seems to have held to a policy of distancing itself as much as possible from getting embroiled in climate change. Assuredly this will be a difficult tightrope walk for them, knowing that strong and disparate views are held by their membership, who are aware more than most of the spectacular shifts in climate and its multicyclic natural complexity over phanerozoic time.
I let my membership subscription lapse many years ago, but if any Fellows are not previously aware, and might wish to comment, the announcement reads:
Quote
The Geological Society has decided to prepare a position statement on climate change. A drafting group has been convened, which will prepare a document summarising the geological evidence. The resulting document will aim to provide a clear and concise summation, accessible to a general audience, of the scientific certainties and uncertainties; as well as including references to further sources of information.
The drafting group met on 18 February, and are currently working on finalising a draft statement. This will be discussed, revised and agreed by the External Relations Committee, and by Council, prior to publication.
Fellows wishing to contribute comments for consideration by the drafting group are invited to send their thoughts to Sarah Day at sarah.day@geolsoc.org.uk.
Please note: the deadline for receipt of comments has now been extended to 15 April.
Unquote
A quick email from the uncertainty meeting. It is absolutely fascinating, i understand that podcasts of all the presentations will be posted on the RS website.
Thanks (and welcome btw).
"Julia Slingo on Uncertainty in Weather and Climate Prediction"
This ought to be interesting since she claimed that her thermometers are an order of magnitude more accurate than the satellite data
March 19, 2010 | Phillip Bratby.
March 19, 2010 | Martin Brumby
Have you seen the I.Mech.E. Report issued 10 March 2010?
See http://tinyurl.com/ydoutdt
I suggest you download and save this document because when the AGWers realise what has happened here they will have this document taken down as it lays out quite clearly that the New Stone Age in the UK will start to bite in 2015 directly as a result of the AGWer's misguided proposals for CCS to "Save the Planet" by killing off coal-fired and gas-fired power stations.
They comprehensively kick Carbon Capture and Storage into touch (page 8, para 6).
In spite of what they say in page 8 para 6, they then advocate extending CCS to gas-fired power stations (new build and retrofit) in the UK. (page 8, para 7)
There are quite a lot of amazing assertions, too many to list here.
The press release for this document (url lost!) says: "The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) was established in 1847 and has some of the world’s greatest engineers in its history books."
If only we could harness the MWh being generated by those titans from an earlier age, as they spin in their graves!
uncertainty event:
Lord May seems to be some midget jest with strong opinions about Popper (James Gleick is better he thinks.. JG's "Chaos" seems to be on the erudite's nighttable,he keeps mentioning it) , also Karl Rove and Murdoch are not to his liking ("the media are a bit of a problem in the post Murdoch era" he thinks)
Anything substantial he did not have on offer for the rest. Likes to break into question time for attention grabbing.
My question to him: do you think we need unelected lords wasting our time with their opinionating?
The science presentations from Harvey Brown, Ian Stewart, Penrose and John Barrow were very interesting. Penrose uses exquisite hand drawn overhead sheets bit similar to some drawings in his emperors new mind but in colour.
Peter Webster, reporting on his Bangladesh project, showed that with reasonable investment (mobiles training warning system) a lot of flooding damage can be prevented. The projected extra water discharge from Asias big rivers is going to be welcome to alleviate upcoming water grabs by China and India.
Leonard Smith had interesting uncertainty definitions.
Mervin King is going to use fancharts from now on.
The last one, lord Smith is not 100% sure if all the weather problems in UK are caused by agw. Only 90% sure :) This was because of the title of the workshop i think.. I did not know the thames gates had to be closed 5 times over the last couple of weeks?
the focus of the minds was a bit on how are we going to communicate "it" all better from now on..Some further unmentioned people remain "fruitcakes"..they must hv meant mr bishop hill..
all in all very interesting initiative.
it will be all in the royal society philosophical transactions publication
My goal is to prepare my own, personal business since you don't see any nice jobs available to choose from.
Could any one provide any hints or online resources about how to apply for government grant money to start my own small business? I have been looking on the internet but every single website asks for money and I have been told by the unemployment office to avoid the sites that want money for grant related information because they are scam. I'd personally be really thankful for any help.