Saturday
Nov052011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The Ecologist talks sense
Nov 5, 2011 Climate: Models No, really. I found a really quite sensible article in the Ecologist about global warming and in particular about climate models.
Mistakes, cover-ups and inaccuracies have served to undermine many people’s faith in climate science at a time when its work is more important than ever.
Reader Comments (135)
And yet, and yet ...
or this classic from Maurice Strong:Not to mention several dozen others.There is not going to be any separation of science from politics as long as the climate change meme is inextricably linked with environmentalists with a very specific anthropophobic agenda.
Remember Tim Wirth:
The aim of the current environmental movement is a return to the Middle Ages and they don't really care how they do it. The Ecologist article makes sense on the surface but we're going nowhere as long as the climate science community (and the IPCC, which has no choice in the matter since that is its remit) is not prepared to countenance any possibility other than that:
a) global warming is happening and will continue to happen albeit with the occasional "remission";
b) it's all mankind's fault.
You're being too kind, Bish. This is mostly "come in spinner" for more of the same old.
The fact is they don't work and however important it is that they do, they don't, so there!
Better off without them and their orchestrated hysterics. The odds are that increasing CO2 will be beneficial for our burgeoning billions anyway [if by any chance a GCM ever came out with such a prediction I could change my mind but we still wouldn't need 'em].
Excellent, thank you Eifion.
Unthreaded is not working...
Talking sense? Katie Hayhoe, Scott A mandia thought this a good isdea to tweet to all their followers..
"If u deny man caused this mess, u’ve sacrificed yr credibility as a sentient human" From the hallowed pages of Forbes http://onforb.es/roU4BA
As the French say, they are having to water-down their wine (mettre de l'eau dans leur vin). There's still a very long way to go in that respect, but yes it's a sign that its beginning to come home to them that all is not rosy in the warmist camp. Some years back I was subscribed to the Ecologist newsletter - until I could stand the self-righteous twaddle no longer...
Well spotted, yer Grace. There does seem to be a significant shift in position on climate science. For example, the article tells us that climate modelling "is by definition an inexact science". Well, well, there's a surprise. And the Met Office's Vicky Pope is quoted as saying that the IPCC process "isn't perfect" and "There is no way to provide an accurate prediction of the future ... our role is simply to supply objective evidence and to represent the uncertainty inherent in the scientific process."
And would the concluding paragraphs (see below - Fildes is the co-author of a report by the "Lancaster Centre for Forecasting") have seen the light of day a year ago? I doubt it.
So GCMs have to be corrected by other means in order to produce reliable forecasts!!!!!!!!!
That is an admission that models need a large 'fudge factor' in order for warmists to say, "I told you so".
Doesn't that describe Richard Black's way of reporting climate science?
LIttle wonder that more and more people are dismissing CAGW.
I would say the use of the word 'faith' covers what climate science is all about.
Have a look at this WUWT article. It is about a 2005 paper that comes to the following conclusions:
1. Models that are calibrated to a dataset might have no predictive ability.
2. Models with perfect physics and perfect data might have no predictive ability.
3. With data errors it might not be possible to find any model with predictive ability.
The model they were using only had 3 tunable parameters.
John in France (...) There's still a very long way to go in that respect, but yes it's a sign that its beginning to come home to them that all is not rosy in the warmist camp. (...)
Yes. And the article says "Vicky Pope, head of climate science advice at the Met Office (...)"
At the time of Climategate, Vicky Pope was "Head of Climate Change Advice".
Some subtle and adroit re-positioning is going on.
Mike Jackson:
"....or this classic from Maurice Strong:
Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?...."
Reported as living in Beijing now, I can't imagine that Maurice Strong is repeating that quote very often - or at all!
The author describes the output of models indifferently as “forecasts”, “predictions”, or “projections”, while Vicky Pope of the Met (echoing Trenberth’s famous remark that the IPCC doesn’t do predictions) says:
‘These are projections – there is no way to provide an accurate prediction of the future – and their goal and that of climate science is to produce a risk assessment of what the science is telling us about how the climate will change. It is up to politicians and society to decide on a response. Our role is simply to supply objective evidence and to represent the uncertainty inherent in the scientific process. It isn’t a question of right and wrong, but of trying to give a balanced assessment of what is certain and uncertain.’
The problems are not (just) in the models, but in the reasoning processes of Pope and her colleagues. Read that paragraph carefully. She says there is no way to provide an accurate prediction of the future, and that her role is to give a balanced assessment of what is certain and uncertain. But she’s just admitted that nothing is certain. There is no way of extracting a coherent message from what she says.
It really is perfect nonsense, not worthy of Old Moore’s almanac.
It can’t be said often enough that the the problem is not (just) in the science. Ben Pile writes tirelessly at Climate Resistance placing it in the politics, prior to the science. Occasional commenters like the sociologist Robert Phelan sometimes post enlightening comments placing it in a wider social and cultural context. Mike Jackson’s quotes above are a useful part of the picture, but how to bring it all together and explain a movement which encompasses practically the entire thinking classes of the Western world?
One thing that undermines climate science is the constant talking up of a crisis just around the corner which one last push will save us from but even if it wasn't needed will make us all good people. It is politics and religion, no science is needed.
Huh?
I cannot believe they said that.
Mike Jackson,
So would AGW be 'Anthropophobic Global Warming'?
"faith in climate science"
"...at a time when its work is more important than ever"
"It is up to politicians and society to decide on a response."
All drivel. They will not learn, they are brainwashed. Climate "science" is thoroughly worthless, a cuckoo thrust into the nest of true science. (I am reminded of John Wyndham's "The Midwich Cuckoos", and the similar-themed 1950's sci-fi movie, "The Space Children" -- and the wicked witch's castle guards in "The Wizard of Oz": "Oh-ee-oh, ee-OH-um". All together now, children.)
Two quotations from the article:
"Another issue is that current GCMs are by no means exhaustive. In a recent report, Nasa climate change scientist James Hansen observed that current climate models do not factor in ‘climate forcing’ – changes that affect the energy balance of the planet – caused by aerosols, and as such deliver incorrect results. He calls it ‘the principal barrier to quantitative understanding of ongoing climate change. Until aerosol forcing is measured, its magnitude will continue to be crudely inferred, implicitly or explicitly, via observations of climate change and knowledge of climate sensitivity."
Hansen is using an ad hoc "hypothesis" to save his falsified models. He has to admit that his models are seriously incomplete. Yet he will not admit that predictions of doom based on them are wrong. Why do we have to put up with people like Hansen who abuse the good name of science for political ends?
"Fildes argues that policymakers need to be responding to a wide range of other climate forcings – not simply greenhouse gases – and considering their effects regionally as well as globally. The IPCC climate modelling process is unreliable because it does not do so, he says, adding that the focus on greenhouse gases has been driven by a priori assumptions in the models themselves. This will have to change in the future, he adds."
Yes, "a priori" assumptions. In fact, the entire modeling endeavor is based on a priori assumptions that will remain forever a priori because models cannot do the work of genuine physical hypotheses. The use of models as substitutes for physical hypotheses forecloses the use of scientific method in the creation and testing of genuine physical hypotheses. Models are useful only as analytic tools that can help reveal hidden "assumptions" in a physical theory.
"....or this classic from Maurice Strong:
Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?...."
How clever of Strong to paint his irrational desires as his rational duty. Kant warned us about this. In his own way, so did John Stuart Mill.
Very gradually the sceptics are winning. The signs are accumulating, albeit slowly: even in Britain, the last redoubt of AGW orthodoxy, a £1 billion CCS scheme has been abandoned, the FIT is being cut back, the Government says that the development of shale gas is in "the national interest" (and even the Labour Party acknowledges its "real potential"), people didn't walk out of Matt Ridley's RSA lecture, Fred Pearce writes this in the Guardian and Richard Black has this on the BBC website. And now there's this article in the Ecologist ("setting the environmental agenda since 1970").
Don't expect the warmists ever to admit they were wrong - that's not going to happen. But this is what winning looks like.
At least the word 'leaked' is used in two articles, rather than the more usual 'hacked' or 'stolen'.
Progress!
First thing I noticed Hamish...
Tony Hansen
If you like.Certainly it's the anthropophobes that are ramping up the catastrophic aspect and trying to convince us that if we don't all go back to wattle and daub huts, wood fires, bad teeth and chewing willow to cure headaches then we're all doomed.
While I agree that politics and science should be separated, I think there also should be a science of "Climate Science." So far, the squirrels are doing a better job this winter. So where's the science?
The article is actually quite damning when you read it carefully -- it says that they are not predicting anything. That includes Ms Pope who wanted millions for new computers just a few months ago.
May I suggest that she buys a bag of peanuts and go out to the park and feed the squirrels.
Anyone notice the item in "ECOLOGIST GREEN DIRECTORY" ad rotation: "Adopt A Wind Turbine With EWEA".
I do hope you get a nice cuddly wind turbine to adopt and do not have to take pot luck! But I think I might stick with orphaned wildlife before considering adopting a wind turbine.
I agree with Don P that the article is quite damning - and, to my mind, supports my sceptics are winning theory (see above). Further to that, here's a personal anecdote:
I'm a director and trustee of a county-wide "community" oriented charity. On paper, it's very PC: and, for example, concerned about AGW. But, in practice, the latter hardly registers these days. Last week, we had a meeting with a few local people where it was reported that a wind farm proposal had been rejected (for the second time). This was greeted with either rejoicing or indifference - except for our CEO who looked glum. That she should be isolated (and slightly embarrassed) by this on represents an extraordinary change of attitude in recent months.
But even more interesting was that, in a discussion with one of our guests who had welcomed the news, I learned - to my astonishment - that he was Chair of a local "Environmental Network" - whose website asserts, for example, that there is a "widespread consensus" that more CO2 will make the Earth "too hot for us", that "we are approaching crisis point" and "disaster" and that the opinions of sceptics are derived from media promotion "by those who stand to lose financially if energy consumption is reduced". In subsequent email correspondence, he told me how he had changed his mind about CAGW but kept quiet about it as he thought CAGW fears spurred people to take action on genuine but local environmental concerns - e.g. litter and water pollution. He asked me if I thought he should "come out of the closet". My answer was not only that he should, but that his organisation should host a debate on the lines: "Our obsession with climate change is an obstacle to tackling urgent environmental concerns". I await his reply.
I tend to veer between optimism and depression on this subject. The sheer indifference towards climate change of everyone around me is immensely heartening. And it has always been a source of ironical pleasure that seemingly the only person aware of events such as Earth Hour or Zero Carbon Britain Day, in my workplace and neighbourhood, has been sceptical me! However, at other times I've felt that the CAGW juggernaut is unstoppable and that fighting it is like waging some sort of futile war without end. Having said that, even if the worst case scenario comes to pass and we're stuck forever in a world dominated by the likes of Greenpeace and WWF, I think we will always have the power to laugh at some of the more idiotic green fantasies, even as we are drafted, like the good soldier Svejk, to take part in them.
I tend to veer between optimism and depression on this subject. The sheer indifference towards climate change of everyone around me is immensely heartening. And it has always been a source of ironical pleasure that seemingly the only person aware of events such as Earth Hour or Zero Carbon Britain Day, in my workplace and neighbourhood, has been sceptical me! However, at other times I've felt that the CAGW juggernaut is unstoppable and that fighting it is like waging some sort of futile war without end. Having said that, even if the worst case scenario comes to pass and we're stuck forever in a world dominated by the likes of Greenpeace and WWF, I think we will always have the power to laugh at some of the more idiotic green fantasies, even as we are drafted, like the good soldier Svejk, to take part in them.
[DNFT!]
Robin
"he thought CAGW fears spurred people to take action on genuine but local environmental concerns"
But it works the other way, too. Once you learn that CAGW is more PR than science, that it has hidden agendas and that the research has been made to fit the conclusions, you begin to wonder about the rest of environmentalism...
Robin -
I wish you well on your wise counsel to your friend. It is exactly so. Awareness of local issues was higher before the CAGW train started rumbling down the tracks; however, concentrating on the CO2 demon has distracted from more important things. Plus, one can celebrate a demonstrable positive influence from local cleanup efforts, whereas a windfarm (or the like) is capable of being at most symbolic.
"All politics is local" -- and it goes well beyond politics.
"While nothing in the emails cast doubt on the fact of manmade climate change."
If this is a good article, our expectations are pretty damn low. It's a :"fact" you see and all else flows from that. The tail is wagging the dog one might say. I find the ignorance of these people intolerable. I might just lose my lunch.
You wouldn't be able to use a computer without the Theory of Relativity...... - ZedsDeadBed, Truro, UK, 3/10/2011 15:53
Robin Guenier:
“this is what winning looks like”.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. That is, I don’t see the CAGW bandwagon being halted except in circumstances so catastrophic (total economic collapse, a revolution led by Jeremy Clarkson..) that I’d almost prefer the world to remain in error.
The articles you link to merely show true believers Pearce and Black painting a pessimistic picture of climate politics in order to rally their troops to greater efforts. Granted, the troops seem dispirited (see the comments below Pearce’s article. Since Guardian CiF has banned most sceptics, discussion is between population doomsters, climate doomsters, peak oilies, etc. The lunatics may be squabbling among themselves, but they’re still in control of the asylum).
How do you get there from here? How do you wipe out belief in CAGW without eliminating the entire liberal media establishment, plus the entire current political leadership? Much as I admire Delingpole and Booker, I’d like to retain a little wider ideological choice. Those who long for the disappearance of the Guardian and the BBC do scepticism no favours.
Your anecdotes are interesting. Here’s mine. I know few people in England now. By chance, 3 of the 4 friends with whom I’ve discussed Climate Change have science PhDs. They react with embarrassment to my scepticism, as if I’d got bad breath or decided to join the Mormons. Yet none of them know anything about the subject. They just believe what they read in the Guardian. In thirty years they (and I) will be dead or senile. But what guarantee is there that the generation they taught or trained will be better informed?
Your Grace,
Please check out Bob Tisdale's article of today at WUWT. It is a good look at models and hindcasting (retrocasting).
"Mistakes, cover-ups and inaccuracies have served to undermine many people’s faith in the Easter Bunny at a time when its work is more important than ever."
O tempora, o mores!
Geoff Chambers:
I know many people in this part of England, all well educated, and not one of them is taken in by AGW or CAGW anymore.
Phillip Bratby
That’s heartening. How do they vote? What changed their minds?
Faced with the Omerta in the media and the social sciences with respect to CAGW, I feel an exchange of anecdotal evidence of the kind started by Robin Guenier might be interesting. Anyone feel like continuing this in Unthreaded?
In my part of UK - affluent, leafy, reasonably well-educated, I know of only one guy who takes 'climate change' seriously. And he is professionally involved in the scam - no CC fewer consultancy contracts.
Even among my cycling club - likely to be 'greener' on average than the general population - it is not a topic that is seen as relevant any more. Just another excuse for the powers that be to oppress the masses. But three years ago, it was high up everybody's worry list. No more.
Robin Guenier is right...it is dying on its feet. It'll take a long time, but each week and month bring a slight retrenchement from earlier positions.
Martin A writes:
"I wish I shared your confidence. There is now a generation who have been thoroughly indoctrinated as schoolchildren."
Here in the USA students do not take their teachers seriously.
Latimer Alder
Just one more winter like the last one is all that it will take, Latimer. After that, people will be too embarrassed to be associated with "global warming."
Don Pablo de la Sierra Just one more winter like the last one is all that it will take, Latimer. After that, people will be too embarrassed to be associated with "global warming."
I wish I shared your confidence. There is now a generation who have been thoroughly indoctrinated as schoolchildren. There is a sizable population of True Believers who have dedicated their lives, not to forget all those those whose living depends on it in one way or another.
Pacific cargo cults apparently continue, notwithstanding the failure of the cargo ever to arrive. I think that the CAGW religion is entirely immune to events such as cold winters. Religious beliefs are not shaken by logic nor by lack of corroboration. It will be with us for an awfully long time to come.
Geoff Chambers, I'm in sympathy with much of what you say. This climate change thing is acutely embarrassing to me, given my frankly liberal politics. It's painful to see these (many of them) well-meaning and intelligent people, so thoroughly taken in. They simply have no idea what they're talking about, but if the NYT's and Greenpeace and MSNBC are telling them that we're on the verge of a climate apocalypse, it simply does not occur to them that they could be wrong. There's absolutely nothing in their experience that would lead them to suppose that the people and institutions and causes they've identifies with all their lives could be wrong, while politicians like Rick Perry and Sarah Palin (however ignorantly) might be right.
My liberal friends and family react the same way as yours by quickly concluding that on this particular topic anyway, I've gone stark raving mad. They wouldn't visit a skeptical climate blog any more than they'd visit one set up by the "right to life" movement. There's just no way to reason with them.
Big NGO needs feeding - they'll be working on something.
Geoff. We are very rural here and it is either Lib Dem or Conservative. People in this area have endured years of seeing Labour hatred of the countryside and the people who live there and the imposition by the urban elite of their will over rural folk (ban on fox hunting, closure of village post offices, closure of bus services, ruination of farmers, school closures, neglected roads etc etc). They have had to endure and fight against wind turbines being located next to their villages and homes, urban dwellers coming out and dumping their rubbish in the countryside, stealing farm vehicles and animals; more and more regulations, you name it. The biggest fight has been against renewable energy schemes (which urbanites love as they don't have to live next to them) and the ever-rising cost of fuel. The rural folk have learned that all this renewable energy is because of "climate change"; and yet nobody has ever seen any signs of a changing climate in the countryside (especially those who have lived long enough to have seen it all before). They are told that we have local democracy and yet when local representatives refuse planning permission, a government inspector comes and over-rules them. They aren't stupid and realise it is just a scam for the benefit of get-rich-quick cowboys and for politicians to take more in taxes and to gain more control over their lives (just like all the ridiculous regulations that rule their lives). They have had to learn how to fight against the planning system and they have learned all about the climate change scam (with a little help from us technical people). The momentum is growing.
Martin A
A neighbor is a police detective and from time to time we have a beer. He tells me that he works on the "10 - 10 - 80" rule of human behavior. By which he means that 10% of the population would never think of breaking the law, 10% would do it at the drop of a hat, and the last 80% would break a law only if they thought that they would be able to get away with it. He goes on to argue that our penal system is based on the premise that to have law and order, you have to convince the 80% that they will get caught. Thus we have all the hoopla about how criminals will go to jail and bad things will happen to them. In other words, it is pressure to conform. Just watch the tele any night to see what I mean.
Accept his argument or not as you like but I think that the argument also applies to "Global Warming." That is, 10% of us are like our beloved ZDB and would still scream that the world is going to melt like a snowball in hell even as hell does freeze over. Another 10% is convince of the opposite, leaving about 80% wondering what the feck is going on. So far, the warmists have done a good job in convincing us (the 80%) that all hell will happen if we don't go back to the dark ages and live in waddle and dab huts.
However, I believe that another cold winter, which we are likely to have, will pretty much convince that 80% that the warmists are full of it.
Climate modelling has a different problem: based on forecast and projection, it is by definition an inexact science, but one upon which concrete decisions must be based if governments and societies are to assess risks and plan ahead.
Sorry Bish but the above statement tells me that this is not a sympathetic paper.
I remember reading many posts on BH by outraged scientists who believed that YES it was the job of a scientist to come up with theories about how things work. However it was also the job of scientists to test those theories by experimenting.
The proposal that Greenhouse gases are "currently" warming the planet is just a theory and it is a theory that can not be tested. How on earth can any sane person then say that it is a theory upon which concrete decisions must be based if governments and societies are to assess risks and plan ahead.
The estimable Mr P. Bratbty posted on BH somewhere in the last few days; a link to a website post somewhere talking about "this is how ice ages start". I could not fault any of the reasoning in that post. In the USA glaciers are growing, some areas are remaining snowbound all year that previously had not.
If you look at the climate history of the last 750,000 years, what do we think we know?
We think we know that the earth has been in an ice age for the last 750,000 years.
We think we know that there have been seven interglacial warm periods in that ice age (we are currently in the seventh warming).
We think we know that interglacial warm periods last about 10,000 years on average and that the cold periods between the interglacials last on average about 100,000 years.
We think we know that of the last 2 billion years more than 1 billion years saw temperatures of 25 degrees C and that for a very small percentage of the time the temperature was down at 10 degrees C.
We think we know that if you classify temperatures above 17 C as warm and below 17 C as cool then about 1.5 billion years have been warm and 500,000 years have been cool. We are also in the longest cool period since Precambrian times.
Falling asleep :( will finish this tomorrow.
The CAGW scam will go away when the money taps are turned off, and not before. And that will only happen when politicians see that throwing pots of taxpayers' money at Green fantasies is an electoral liability.
Looked at in that light, the coming economic turmoil will have that as a silver lining.
erm . . .
that's not actually an article - it's a sentence. Surely you know the difference Bishop?
I'm with Robin Guenier on this one.
This is what winning looks like. There won't be any huge dramatic "oh, wow, we were wrong all along" moment. There'll just be a gradual shifting of positions - partly driven by people like the forecasting expert in the Ecologist article - experts from other disciplines who will gradually bring a little sanity to proceedings.
People in general already seem utterly bored of global warming. Politicians and newspapers are finally waking up to the fact that the cure is more expensive than the problem. But any large issue has huge inertia. It'll take decades for it all to shake out. Organisations up and down the country have positions on climate change - it'll take quite a while for all of those to quietly disappear.
I work as a gardener in a team of ten very bright, educated gardeners. I'm the only one with any real interest in the issue of global warming. Up until a couple of years ago the organisation I work for (NT) was in the habit of droning on about global warming constantly. It just doesn't get mentioned these days. Last time I looked at the global warming part of the NT web site it obviously hadn't been updated for a couple of years. Many of the links didn't work. Tumbleweeds.
Scots Renewables
Are you an idiot, or just a blatant troll? The link to the article was six words in. You clearly didn't bother to read it.
[BH adds: Please moderate your tone]