Bishop Hill Beddington: "We need error bars!"
Sep 17, 2010 Climate: Statistics Sir John Beddington has commissioned a summary of the science of global warming at the GO Science website. My impression, based on a brief perusal of the contents, is that it's largely a standard-issue "we're all going to fry" kind of thing, but perhaps a more detailed look will prove me wrong. This was interesting though:
The fact that uncertainty exists in climate science, as it does in other fields, does not negate the value of the evidence – and it is important to recognise that uncertainty may go in both (or a number of) directions. But an appreciation of the nature and degree of uncertainty is critical if the science is to properly inform decision-making. Indeed, that is what much scientific endeavour is about, describing both what is known and where our understanding is imperfect, and placing “error bars” on the knowledge we have.
This appears to be an admission that we don't as yet have error bars on "the knowledge we have". An important statement, I would say.
Reader Comments (59)
I am extremely frustrated.
Yes it would be nice to fully understand the direct and indirect effects of CO2 being added to the atmosphere. I hope scientists continue to try to solve this scientific question.
Yes it would be great if we had enough knowledge to construct computer models that would predict future climate CORRECTLY.
However the question facing the planet is NOT " the direct and indirect effects of CO2 being added to the atmosphere" or "computer models that would predict future climate CORRECTLY"
The question is "can we predict with any certainty what will happen next?"
I have to state the following points that I have made many times (will some uber scientist pls debunk this or I will keep posting them?)
1) We are in an ice age
2) We are in an interglacial within that ice age.
3) There have been 4 interglacials in the last 500,000 years that look very much like this one.
4) at about the same temp we have now CO2 had zero effect on temperature (directly or indirectly) in all those interglacials.
Please tell me why we are discussing scientific theories when empirical evidence tells us what is going to happen.
We can figure the science out later.
Well that neatly disposes of Deltoid at least.
cosmic
People are turning off or starting to laugh at it. They've lost the audience.
I think it happened during the first blizzard of 2009-2010. But clearly you are exactly correct. Well said.
Meanwhile in Australia, we have a new minority left leaning Labor - Green alliance, supported by two independents from deeply conservative areas!.
The first act of this new goverment has been to start to organise a parliamentary committee,
limited to true believers. Doubters, denlialists and sceptics are barred.
That's the new post normal "fairer and kinder" parliamentary process at work, overturning 110 years of tradition,
Global disaster is not dead, it has just been sleeping.
Take care USA, who you vote for in November.
Else "we'll all be ruined".
GSW 8:51
He's more from the 'Rat Catcher' side of things.
Ah! Sort of a poacher-turned-gamekeeper but the other way round?
Dung,
Climate systems are essentially chaotic. So an accurate forecast is impossible. However, there is a lot that can be done to get a clearer picture of what could happen. That includes
- Recognising the uncertainties in the science.
- Recognising the measurement errors.
- Recognising the role of bias in data collection, selection of data sets, and data conversion into a consistent format.
- Ranking parts of the science according to the levels of certainty.
If we do all that, then I believe, we are still left with a risk of catestrophic climate change. It is then a case of trying to select a cost-effective policy to offset the worst possible impacts. This is bound to be a more limited policy than at present, especially when one takes into account the delivery abilities of national governments and international organisations.
Re Beddington :)
"Ah! Sort of a poacher-turned-gamekeeper but the other way round?"
More of a fish catcher and fishkeeper really. Gets a salary of £165k for being the government's CSA, supplemented that with income from MRAG Ltd managing fishing around the Chagos Islands. Has been remarkably successful in winning that contract every year since inception and opposed plans to turn Chagos into a marine reserve. Can't think why. MRAG also runs the FMSP on behalf of DFID and other interests. Beddington stood down as a director on taking up office, but remains 50% shareholder with his wife-
http://www.fish2fork.com/news-index/money-from-chagos-fishery.aspx
Unfortunately MRAG lost the Chagos contract after it was declared a reserve, after people pointed out MRAG's management hadn't exactly been environmentally friendly or sustainable. Profitable though.
Before he gets to his 'error bars', Prof Beddington makes these statements of his faith:
'The evidence is compelling that climate change is happening, that human activities are the major driver for this and that the future risks are substantial. This evidence includes wide-ranging, long term and robust observations of changes that are taking place, and projections of possible future changes that are based on basic physical laws.'
I have done a modest Fisking of them here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/09/naive-climatology-what-chance-have.html
In brief, I think he is being naive.
Now I've reached his 'error bars'. He does well to include them in quotation marks since the error bars of statistical measurement analysis are narrowly defined, and when it comes to the computer models on which the entire edifice of climate alarmism stands, error bars are problematic. Here is a link to a very interesting essay on the topic of modellers tending to give their models undue credence, even to the point of effectively forgetting they are, after all, merely models: http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=325
Extract:
'Myanna Lahsen is an anthropologist who has studied a new tribe that has emerged as part of the wider community of climate scientists: climate modellers. Over a period of 6 years (1994-2000), while she was based at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado), a major base for modellers, she travelled widely to conduct over 100 interviews with atmospheric scientists, 15 of whom were climate modellers. Her findings were published in Social Studies of Science as Seductive Simulations? Uncertainty Distribution Around Climate Models in 2005.
The purpose of Lahsen’s paper was to consider the distribution of certainty around General Circulation Models (GSMs), with particular reference to Donald MacKenzie’s concept of the ‘certainty trough’, and propose a more multidimensional and dynamic conceptualisation of how certainty is distributed around technology. That, thankfully, is not the subject of this post, interesting though it is once you work out what she is talking about.
At the heart of her research is the question of whether modellers are just too close to what they are doing to assess the accuracy of their simulations of Earth’s climate that they create. She suggests that atmospheric scientists who are at some distance from this field of research may be better able to do so, which is not so surprising, but she also reveals a darker side of the culture that climate modellers are part of which is much more disturbing.'