Bishop Hill Speaking volumes
Nov 7, 2013 Climate: Sceptics Climate: Statistics 
Mike Kelly has a letter in the Times today calling for an independent panel of statisticians and engineers to assess what the climatologists are telling us.
Sir, When I hear the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser one week, and the Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills ten days later, with several members of the House of Lords in the interim, all referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as being more certain than ever of mankind’s role in changing the climate, but none of them qualifying the statement by admitting that man is still a bit player compared with the Sun and with nature over the past 150 years, then there is need for a really independent assessment of the interface between science and policy in this most important and contentious subject (Global warming battle “has become a religion” Nov 6).
Who is to adjudicate though? I suggest a panel made up from the Royal Statistical Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. These people are numerate and scientific but outside the immediate science. If they can be persuaded that the evidence and likely impact of mankind is so strong that we must revolutionise society in short order, then we must.
In 1868 William Stanley Jevons FRS urged the UK to abandon the Industrial Revolution, as the then addiction to coal was such that when coal ran out (about now) the collapse of the UK would be too terrible to contemplate. With hindsight, Jevons was clearly wrong. Who is to say that the latter-day Jevonses will not be proved wrong? Let us please have the debate in some degree of historical context and before a properly sceptical audience.
Readers may recall the exchanges in the House of Commons yesterday, when an alleged failure of sceptics to come to speak to the Science and Technology Committee was said by Mark Walport to "speak volumes". (It seems fairly clear that in fact I was the only sceptic invited, but that's by the by). Here Kelly has set down a very interesting challenge, one that I am sure will be studiously ignored by the government, by Walport and by the rest of the scientific establishment. This too will speak volumes.
Reader Comments (40)
If walport actually read any of the many Skeptic books out there, he'd be able to speak volumes.....
Whilst any challenge to the closed shop of Thermageddon is welcome, I believe this is a mistake.
It simply substitutes one appeal to authority with another. And, as we've seen before, bureaucracy dearly loves appeal to authority. Control of a few key members then gives them access to the authority and approval of the masses beneath.
This, in short, has been the entire gameplan of the green movement for the last twenty years: seize the heights.
Whether the Royal Statistical Society back or reject global warming alarmism isn't really relevant to the issue that we are supposed to be concentrating on, which is truth, and the nature of reality. A consensus isn't science, even if we agree with it.
Stuck-Record - I suppose you are right.
When the Great Delusion finally ends, I suspect it will primarily be through having been laughed off the stage.
Though every little bit helps.
Anyone who is not a sceptic is not a scientist.
I've wondered about the idea that you just get another dummy inquiry along the lines of Russell or Oxburgh. But I think it would be hard for any prominent statistician to talk their way out of the statistical issues with AR5 without their colleagues in the profession noticing.
One needs to be more than numerate, skilled in statistics or engineering, to be able to assess whether what is being proposed as the dangerous outcome of a coupled non-linear, chaotic system is valid and thus justifies costly action now.
At best, such a committee would be able to advise that the evidence of demonstrated skill in climatological prediction is low on both a global and regional scale. They would be able to deconstruct climate models and identify some missing components, assumed relationships leading to parametrization, and limits of what scale of climate behaviour is reasonably possibly computable from such chaos based models.
They could debunk the application of many of the statistical techniques as used in a climate context.
They could assess media output to identify biases in climate change reporting.
They could quantify the adverse affects of man made climate change caused since the industrial revolution, how regional dangers have changed because of climate change.
They could make an assumption about sealevel rise continuing and suggest the scale, cost and timing of a migration plan for potentially affected areas as the potential cost saving if mitigation action is taken early.
There is little else that could reasonably be advised about the long term future other than wait and see what dangerous changes really start to happen as changes move pretty slowly and mankind is pretty good and getting better, through technology, at responding to real, tangible problems.
The only consistent things are: that the government scientific advisers in recent years have been very biased & of very limited capability; and the scale of money being made from renewable industry by members of both houses..
All real scientists would welcome an open public debate of the science. But we have the typical meme that there are no real scientific sceptics. However, there have been no surveys (apart from the laughable and dubious Harrabin one), even the illustrious bodies who made statements support AGW have never canvassed their members.
... and pigs will fly.
This is ultimately a political not a mathematical cause - look at the debunking of statistics by the "More or Less" programme on R4 which usually comes to the conclusion that both sides have cherry picked the data. Talking of cherry picking was I alone in hearing Ms Flint the other day stating that decarbonisation applies to electricity only. According to a quick google search electricity production amounts to a little over 25% of emissions. So in politicians' speak, they can be very strident because they are only referring to a small part of carbon use by 2050 ( and this will be covered largely by nuclear) - what shystersI I do not hear much on transport, petrochemicals, fertilisers, agriculture,cement production, construction and infrastructure which all require fossil fuels for far longer . However, this IS the fundamentalist green agenda that they are collectively in danger of adoption by the custard pie view of the environment which now prevails among the urban bien pensants.
Bish: You beat me to it. I had exactly the same concerns that any kind of meeting to determine the stats would turn out like the whitewash inquiries you mention.
On another note, and pace the reference to Jevons and the end of coal, I am reminded of something I read at WUWT: "The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stone; the Oil Age will not end because we ran out of oil."
1... If there was an easy authority these muppet reporters could go to, they would like it
BUT I agree with @Stuck-Record.. Here we all understand the fallacy of argument to authority... We are about getting to the truth of Validated Science
- but there is a problem that so many people like BBC reporters don't get it & are totally dependent on authority ..as soon as an issue comes up they don't try to spend a day or 2 trying to understand the issue ..they somehow get pointed towards one expert and that's enough for them ..what he/she says goes.
.. it's like the fallacy of the man wearing the white lab coat in the washing powder TV advert
(I get the impression they don't like to go to 2 or 3 experts cos that disturbs the simple picture they can handle)
2... There must be scientific/ bodies in other countries which already produce good science and laugh at the stupidity of the IPCC & it's over extrapolation
3. It doesn't take much analysis to show IPCC science is rubbish ..if it was any good they would get their predictions right
we need a public enquiry. The protagonists in this farce need to be questioned under oath and then cross-examined by those that will not accept obfuscation as an answer.
We don't need another toothless whitewash/enquiry. What we need is an officially constituted and funded (yippeee, more funding for academics to chase) Red Team, charged with identifying all the holes in AR5. And "there aren't any" should not be an allowable outcome.
Public Enquiry 2018.
Right idea. Wrong venue.
Public enquiries allow manipulation of panel, witnesses, interviewing questions/techniques/limits.
A trial, however, allows each side to hire their own legal team.
Lord, I would love to see the warmist arguments taken apart by a properly briefed barrister. All in front of a jury.
Since the Royal Society has been corrupted by the alarmists, what makes Mike Kelly think that the Royal Statistical Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering will prove immune?
Bring in any process engineer and they will demolish the IPCC's 'Energy Budget' in a few sentences, concluding the IPCC models are a perpetual motion machine so cannot predict better than a piece of seaweed.
son of mulder,
whilst agreeing with your longhand solution, surely there is a shortcut so that the layman can easily understand whether the "alarmists" know what they are talking about? How good are their predictions? Answer: Not very good at all.
Stuck-Record,
I too would love to see that "trial" especially when you see the toothless nature of yesterday's enquiry. It would make a great TV programme. I don't suppose you'd get any CAGW supporters to attend though.
AlecM: I suggest you convene the perfect committee, chaired by yourself, and release the names.
It's a tremendous letter from Mike Kelly. In reponse to Roy (12:13 PM) once both of those societies are also as corrupted it may be game over. Lysenko and Stalin win and that would usher in something truly terrible. But we can never know without trying. Fear is always a massively unreliable guide.
Meanwhile take a look at the five item questionnaire from Hans Rosling prior to his programme tonight on BBC 2. Kirsty Wark gave this a big plug on Newsnight last night. One can't rule out an internal palace coup with all this. But the public inquiry option - McIntyre and Monckton both argued for a Royal Commission on Climategate back in 2010 if I remember correctly - is not for me to be dismissed lightly.
I agree with what's being said here. This religion will not die until it is shown to be ludicrous (even then religions survive..!)...
I am reminded of the period in the 19th century when British politicians were firmly of the opinion that the typhoid epidemic in London and elsewhere was due to 'miasma' (bad air). It was only when John Cooper (I believe that was his name ) showed that there was no typhoid around one particular source of drinking water in the capital, which did not come from that open sewer known as the River Thames, did it become apparent that drinking clean water was the answer.
Again, there is the story that the head of the Patents Office in about 1896 wrote to HM government requesting that his office be disbanded, as 'Everything which could be invented, had been invented'.
Politicians (most, but not all) are gullible; and get a glint in their eyes when they can detect a new opportunity to look after themselves; oh, and a new source of taxation....
Sherlock: I guess the 19th century and errors of reasoning therein have to be your strong point :) But I love the miasma example, not least because of the common thread of erroneous demonisation of the air. Knew about it but never made the connection. Thanks.
I agree with StuckRecord and trevjon. Just like those who want the courts to decide (heaven help us if that ever is allowed to happen) the issue is not about information, or proof. If it was, it would be all over by now.
By all means, if an opportunity arises, or can be created, for this kind of confrontation - seize it. The unwillingness of the Nomenklatura to do this is no accident.
But it's a distraction, IMO.
Politicians need to feel the hot breath of the electorate down their necks. They need to be rewarded for asking hard questions. They need to be fed the ammunition that will make them stand out and look good. At base, most of them are simple creatures.
A debate or inquiry or "trial" among a bunch of eggheads is not more than a single bullet in that armoury.
johanna: Agree fully on the democratic option being best. But of course something as well-reasoned as Mike Kelly's letter in The Times can help persuade an influential segment of the electorate to get their bums off the fence and urge others to do likewise, not least our elected representatives. The Prince Philip Professor of Technology at Cambridge is smart enough to know that, that the "really independent assessment" for which he argues may never happen. Hence the open letter - with the Bish here providing the tunnel through the Murdoch paywall.
Sherlock 1
I think you mean John Snow and cholera, don't you? It was the cluster of infections and resulting deaths from cholera around the Broad Street communal water pump that led him to the solution.
Messenger: Yep, John Snow (1813 - 1858) proved that the answer to cholera was clean water. That's what the BBC says anyway. So are they going to look as foolish about the idea of air pollution from CO2 as the authorities of that day do now about about miasma?
FWIW, I think Mike Kelly's suggestion of an independent review is an excellent one, especially given that even though Santer's 17 years deadline has now passed (with RSS at least), and the alarmists seem content to keep digging ever deeper into their holes. What's the alternative, wait for yet another 10 or 15 years of cooling before the politicians finally realise that that have been sold a pup and that the consensus 'science' is largely based on dubious data, flawed calculations of climate sensitivity, unvalidated computer models and dodgy statistics?
The sooner the reality dawns on the politicians the better, this country (and very few others for that matter) can afford this irrational CO2-phobic madness to continue.
I am fed up hearing the Beddingtons, Walpotts and Stotts saying the evidence for CO2 induced AGW is stronger than ever, and yet never ever being asked by journalists or decision makers what this evidence actually is. Antarctic sea ice extent has never been greater in the satellite era, Arctic sea-ice extent is currently back at 1980 levels, nobody's been able to find Trenberth's missing heat, or the predicted tropospheric hotspot, none of the IPCC climate models predicted the 15-18 year pause/plateau, the Greenland glaciers have not receded any more or faster than they did in the 1930s, Alaska has been cooling for the last 10 years, unadjusted sea level rise is currently only 1mm pa, and now the best the 'gold standard' scientists in the IPCC can come with is that the missing heat has SUNK down to hide with the dragons in the deep ocean, where it conveniently can't be measured. FFS, how much worse can consensus climate science get? </rant>
Richard Drake - errr - no.He proved that contaminated water transmitted cholera. But it can also be transmitted in other ways. Clean water is not "the answer" to cholera. And it's certainly not a treatment.
Let's not get sloppy while trying to refute sloppiness.
At least with Cholera they knew they had a problem.
Well I remain sceptic I'm afraid, they may "remain outside the immediate science" but no doubt can be 'bought' on side like the rest.
Royal Academy of Engineering (Lord Henley)
"And Government will continue to work with the engineering profession to
meet the challenge of adapting our infrastructure and help the profession
take advantage of the opportunities a changing climate presents."
http://www.theiet.org/policy/collaboration/etf/infrastructure-final.cfm?type=pdf
Crony capitalism in action?
As for -
Royal Statistical Society
It would seem to depend on who actually made it to the panel
"Prof Hand [Royal Statistical Society] singled out a 1998 paper by Prof Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a constant target for climate change sceptics, as an example of this.
He said the graph, that showed global temperature records going back 1,000 years, was exaggerated - although any reproduction using improved techniques is likely to also show a sharp rise in global warming. He agreed the graph would be more like a field hockey stick than the ice hockey blade it was originally compared to.
"The particular technique they used exaggerated the size of the blade at the end of the hockey stick. Had they used an appropriate technique the size of the blade of the hockey stick would have been smaller," he said. "The change in temperature is not as great over the 20th century compared to the past as suggested by the Mann paper."
But of course Mann disagreed..
"Prof Mann, who is Professor of Earth System Science at the Pennsylvania State University, said the statistics used in his graph were correct.
"I would note that our '98 article was reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a clean bill of health," he said. "In fact, the statistician on the panel, Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand." "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7589897/Hockey-stick-graph-was-exaggerated.html
But then again, anyone nominated by Beddington to chair one of the climategate inquiries must be highly suspect!! and liable to being 'warmed up'!!!
http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/09/the-uk-government-tricks-the-scitech-committee/
Nor can we overlook the propensity of our bureaucrats to ensure there is an overwhelming majority of 'warmists' on these panels!!!
So I agree with stuck-record it would be highly foolish to follow the 'appeal to authority' meme.
lapogus
That last paragraph of yours sums up the situation neatly.
Why not email it as it sits to every journalist and MP whose email address you can find (minus the last sentence perhaps and possibly without specifying the scientists by name)?
It is the best nutshell statement of the current state of the climate that I have seen in a long time. If nothing else it may make a few of the recipients stop to ask whether any of it is accurate and it only takes a couple of checkable facts to get people looking into some of the other claims as well.
- In an ideal world, Cameron pushes the Liberals, they get angry. Cameron forces an election ..and the new UKIP Conservative government puts an end to the whole show.
- However not ideal world, since the Cons are so embedded with the GreenEnergyHedgefund mafia and seem depend on it for their election funding (Cameron's election agent connected to windfarm swizz biz etc.. )
johanna: Sure, cholera can be caused by other things. I wasn't trying to imply otherwise - my wording was to be understood locally in time and space: the answer to cholera in Soho in 1854. Fair enough to point that out. What I've been wondering about is my own lack of insight that people in 1850s were unable to see this because of an unproven assumption about bad air. I think that's a particularly powerful analogy - though as son of mulder says they knew they had an immediate and deadly problem with cholera and we certainly don't have that clarity with the net impact of CO2 post 2080.
I seem to recall a 'Yes Minister' around this issue.
Certainly getting anyone beyond innumerate PPE grads and populist activist and/or BBC (OK, basically tautology) pleasers crunching some numbers is a step in the right direction, but there is still the machine in place that can turn white into redacted without missing a beat.
For sure anything that has a participant within sniffing range of a gong or Lordship should be well steered clear of.
As with all things, there are good and bad engineers, and the wrong kind often seem easily seduced by the shiny-shiny things simply by proving to be a team player.
It may be worth noting with regard to public understanding of science that many people still believe the miasma theory i.e. "bad" smells can make them ill.
It would be interesting to draw up a blacklist of those leading scientists, politicians and others who have done the most damage to the nation in the name of climate change. For impact, the list should be no more than ten or so. The idea is that they should be held to account when the scam is over.
The press would enjoy such a thing, regardless of their bias and it would gain publicity for the hiatus in warming. It may even cause those involved to reflect on their role in spreading alarmism when there is no real justification.
@JunkkMale
I agree with you about engineers. I once had a lengthy forum debate about global warming with other engineers and the split was about 50:50. Interestingly, the engineers who were chartered (C Eng) were more likely to be warmists than sceptics. One did an excellent line in posting extracts from SkS and would never reply in his own words - even though he was asked to do so many times.
So the engineers who had talked the engineering establishment into being granted extra letters were more likely to support the establishment and the individualists who were not impressed by the extra letters were mainly sceptics.
(Needless to say, I am not a chartered engineer!)
Nov 7, 2013 at 6:43 PM | graphicconception
People who like to join clubs, societies and academies etc are, in my view, more likely to suffer from 'the madness of crowds'. They like to 'fit in'.
(not a chartered engineer either)
Well, I'm a chartered engineer and I think positive feedback systems are bollocks.
SimonJ. BTech MRAeS CEng
It gets more stupid by the day but the real criminals are the journalists who have either been told to shut up and do as they are told...or are too thick and stupid to understand basic science.
The sea ice should have been long gone by now but is coming back with a vengeance. The computer models have failed so badly they are now looking for the warming of the Troposphere in the oceans. They think we are warmer than 1,000 years ago when Greenland was largely covered by grass and we had vineyards in northern England....it goes on and on.
Madness and stupidity all rolled into one.
think I agree with james griffin at 10:38 PM
"the real criminals are the journalists"
most influential MSM have informed (I use that term loosely) the public for years on CAGW with no real evidence to back up the scare, they now need the spotlight shone brightly on them (we know who you are & will not forget etc..)
some of these hacks are now trying to slink of into the long grass & downplay their role in the CO2 scare (which fantasy helped by these useful idiots is now crippling the UK energy sector/economy).
Mike Kelly has it right that a wider body of expertise needs to be involved before the pols decide to trash UK & western economies on zero hard facts, but until the MSM lies & distortions to Joe Pubic are tackled the pols backed by MSM have the upper hand.
I think a model focused statistical audit of AR5 and of the processes that made it is a good idea.
There are lessons needing to be captured before the evidence starts disappearing and the backstory is purposely obscured.
John