Bishop Hill More on fraternisation
Apr 6, 2012 Climate: Models Climate: Sceptics Interest in the ongoing "football match between the trenches" continues, with an article on Yale Climate Forum by Keith Kloor, who discusses the Met Office's outreach work as well as Scott Denning's visit to the Heartland Conference. This bit was somewhat irksome.
Reminded that much opposition to climate science (and dismissal of climate change) seems ideological in nature, perhaps limiting the amount of headway that can be made on the science if people are already predisposed against it, Denning agreed that the culture war dynamic presents a high hurdle to overcome.
“Almost everyone that dismisses climate change as a problem does it for ideological or political reasons, not for scientific reasons,” he said. “We scientists need to recognize that.”
I clearly have an ideological objection to the use of unvalidated climate models as policy tools. There must be an "-ism" for that. :-)
Reader Comments (64)
@ron
'This is close to the figure for greenhouse gases only generally taken as 1.0 °C and suggest that neither fast response positive feedback, such as increased water vapour from increased warming, nor slow response feedback, albedo changes, has kicked in yet'
Fine.
If and when these feedbacks do kick in and you can show some actual observational/experimental proof that they have, then come back and tell me all about it once again.
Until then, there are plenty of other real occurring problems to worry about. I'm quite content to leave hypothetical ones on the (very) back burner.
I'm not holding my breath.
@Your Grace
'I clearly have an ideological objection to the use of unvalidated climate models as policy tools. There must be an "-ism" for that. :-)'
Your ideological objection is best described as 'realism'.
Adam Corner is policy advisor to COIN. George MArshall also COIN and the subject of Ben's article..
When I suggested to George on his blog, that just perhaps, trying to persuade sceptics, whilst being responsible for TWO Deniers - Halls of Shame (he is on the advisory board of CaCC) might not be the best approach..
George has 'pre-moderated'; my comments at his blog climateDENIAL.org..
which has a link to Rising Tides (Rising Tide also founded by George) - Hall of Shame
Perhaps Adam could use his expertise to persuade George, why his approach is failing.. ?
I
A combined reply to those of you have commented on my earlier posting.
1. Note the 'If' in "If all the waming...".
2. I suggested that the 1.2 °C figure is a maximum. The real figure could be less than that.
3. The 'yet' in '"nor... has kicked in yet." was mildly ironic.
4. The question of what happens to the heat and CO2 is a complex one but, I would submit, one aspect of determining the CO2e sensitivity.
“Almost everyone that dismisses climate change as a problem does it for ideological or political reasons, not for scientific reasons,”
I regret to say that I and about 60 million other "normal" people in the UK dismiss climate change as a problem simply because it isn't one.
No political or scientific input needed.
And if you chuck into the paddling pool of childlike climate scientists the possibility, nay the high probability [now apparently experimentally proved by Nahle] that what they thought was direct thermalisation with its 1 K baseline climate sensitivity is really very much smaller, they start to cry.
And when you also say there is a perfectly logical explanation of modern warming, now reversing, from natural effects not involving CO2, they blubber.
The recent Nature paper claiming CO2 leads T is taking a real hammering. Eschenbach asks whether the authors had actually plotted out the raw temperature data.
And on another thread, I have had comments by people maybe from the Met Office plaintively asking if I knew about GHGs 'reflecting IR back to Earth'. I haven't let on to them that i was using GHGs to heat way back in the 1960s when I ran an open heath plant. These people are so poorly educated in basic radiation physics that it's embarrassing.
This is something that the doom mongers never really understood. One can agree that CO2 may interact with "climate" (to whatever extent) but that doesn't mean that one agrees with killing pensioners in order to reduce CO2. We have the "killing fields" of the "Kyoto protocol" - call it out and you are a 'denier'. Even the most stupid acolyte must recognise that things are going wrong with the plan.
Now where did I put my AK? I'm pretty sure that I have no intention of being killed quietly by my own 'government'.
I dismissed their rubbish despite standing for the green party because:
a) those pushing it were untrustworthy - because many were motivated by ideology and not science.
b) when I checked their claims that "there was loads of evidence" there was in fact little or no evidence backing their claims.
c) for ideological reasons people I wanted to agree with were ignoring evidence that I could not honestly dismiss.
But there is a bit of truth that I am motivated by ideology: that truth is more important than politics, that science should be impartial and based on the evidence, and that there is absolutely no reason to believe someone just because of their position... particularly when their views are not supported by the facts.
I've posted this, there, and we'll see if it reaches the intended audience:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
April 6, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Is it possible to enlighten a racist with rational face-to-face conversations?
The discussions between climate consensus scientists and skeptics reminds me of the discussions between supporters of the Herrnstein and Murray “Bell Curve” conjecture and that notion’s skeptics.
The “Bell Curve” conjecture, I take liberty to remind some of you, was the notion that the trend of richer, smarter, (whiter) populations to marry and breed with each other; versus an opposing trend of poorer, less-intelligent, (blacker) populations to reproduce without marriage, was producing a consequent trend, and threat of a measurable divergence in IQ between racial groups. Implicit in the conjecture was that IQ drove a number of other interesting results, including income, ability to pay taxes, need for government support payements, participation in the drug and other crime-based economies, etc.
Now, the problem with the conjecture was that Herrnstein and Murray had very little actual measured data on their central causal factor: IQ. Instead they took proxies — sometimes using enrollment in particular government programs, sometimes using mail address zip code, sometimes using arrest records — as a proxy for “black”. They took similar proxies for demographic groups that they said were likely predominately “white”. Then they took, as proxies for IQ, the results of other tests such as the US Armed Forces Qualification Tests or ACT tests or even freshmen college GPA results. They took the proxy demographic data trends and proxy IQ intelligence trends and homogenized and averaged and graphed and presented a very scary set of scenarios. And “even if this is not completely true” they argued, “should we DO something?”
Just what “we” should do about “them” and the terrible scenarios “they” threaten “us” with was largely left as an exercise to the (ruling) class…
The bad proxies and the bad statistics going into the Herrnstein and Murray conjecture could be discussed. debunked, rationally. Mathematically. Scientifically.
Or we could simply argue that the whole “science” was a charade intended to provide cover for a political point of view.
Do you suppose that the sorts of journalists, celebrities, politicians, and non-mathematically inclined academics who, for whatever reason, decided they believed in the “Bell Curve” scenario would be persuaded to DISbelieve, to change their decision, on the basis that the proxies and stats were, to say the least, flawed?
Now frankly I’m of the opinion that Michael Mann is our decades’ version of Charles Murray, and that ascribing all sorts of “climate change” dangers to rising CO2 concentrations is strikingly similar to blaming falling IQ for the economic problems of urban America. But my inclinations are neither here nor there. My question is, can the inclinations to belief, or disbelief, of controversial conjectures be discussed and resolved purely by review of the proxies and the statistics?
Crank alert!
I wonder when that (pouncer, Apr 7, 2:14 AM) will be deleted or snipped for being off topic, among other things.
Wow this guy is amazing. He has actually met every single person who opposes his point of view and asked them why. He must have being very busy.
Mark
Reversal-ism
Lysenkoism
concoctatheoryconvincegulliblefoolstheworldisindangerandmakebillionsoutofit-ism