Thursday
Dec182014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Sans ifs, sans buts, sans everything
Dec 18, 2014 Climate: Models Climate: other Ethics Judith Curry quotes this sentence from Peter Lee's GWPF essay on climate change and ethics
Omitting the ‘doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts’ is not a morally neutral act; it is a subtle deception that calls scientific practice into disrepute.
I couldn't help but recall the reaction from climate scientists when I said it was "grossly misleading" of Keith Shine to omit any caveats when explaining the efficacy of GCMs to parliamentarians.
I stand by what I said.
Reader Comments (132)
The link for the complete essay by Peter Lee at the Global Warming Policy Foundation. It looks like it is well worth taking the time to read all of it.
ATTP, the things that you would do if there is only a bit of warming are very different than if there is to be a lot of warming. Investing in windmills for example would be a criminal waste of energy and money because they will never be a reliable energy source. At the moment countries like the UK are flirting with energy reduction. They don't see the incompatability of running exactly the same society we have now with one that only uses a small amount of fossil fuels. It's dumb.
Until there is another high energy source then nuclear is the only alternative to fossil fuels. Lots of nuclear. Enough to make electric cars, heating and steel production viable. But instead, so called convinced countries like Germany and France are backing away from it. The only people who sing the praises of the all electric car are those who normally travel by private jet. The worst possible people are running the campaign for austerty and not a single warmist has the brains to realise that it's game over for their mission.
Without an accurate number for sensitivity people will panic too much but act too little. Everybody will point at someone else as the culprit rather than admit they themselves have to be part of the solution. Why would anyone come up with solutions for an ill defined problem that seems decades away? Let business sort it out. Tomorrow, I'll sort it out tomorrow. If then your predictions of doom turn out to be premature they stop listening altogether.
There is no one type of fix that can be scaled up depending upon how bad the problem is.
Tiny,
Precisely. Knowing the amount of warming that is likely is the crucial issue, though. Plus, the difference between doing something and then discovering that climate sensitivity is low, compared to doing nothing and discovering that it isn't.
Doing something that doesn't work is worse than doing nothing. You waste energy, resources and the patience of the public. Testing stuff is worthwhile, rolling out vanity projects isn't. Please note that with imports included UK CO2 per capita footprint hasn't fallen. All that money and CO2 hasn't changed. What we've saved in one area we've incresed in another. Many of the low hanging CO2 reduction fruits have been plucked. After this, it gets really hard.
But it's not a choice between acting on a low sensitivity or a high one. That is a false comparison. If we were logical our actions would be based on the best estimate. We would not use either extreme.
Actions might go beyond what is necessary to meet the best estimate, depending on cost. However using the high estimate to drive policy has consequences. This is not a case of "better safe than sorry" but being sorry in both directions. If we don't act and sensitivity is high we will regret it. However if we do act and sensitivity is low we will have wasted resources that might have been used beneficially elsewhere.
ATTP
"those who aren't in denial"
Of what?
Philip Bratby had it right at the beginning of the thread.
DNFTT.
The majority of the very many comments by our "academic" visitor can best be categorised as Arrogance, meet Incompetence.
His hand wringing worries about 'high sensitivity' and all the rest should be compared with the obvious, real, factual risk to the economy and the impoverishment of the poor by adopting "solutions" that were never going to work to problems that probably don't exist (or at least are blatantly exaggerated).
And how much temperature rise, over whatever timescale, will be averted by more and more ruinables?
Unmeasurable.
And it has been pointed out that all his sophistry boils down to a defence of the Precautionary Principle. (As applied to climate psyence. Not of course to engineering and common sense).
Despite the Bish's prediliction for an ecumenical approach and 'playing nice', personally I look forward to him and all of his ilk flipping burgers for a living.
Arthur Dent, it's worse than that, we're acting without conviction, so what's being done is pointless. It neither reduces CO2 nor saves resources until we know what we should do. It's busy work to assuage guilt. It let's one group of people feel virtuous that they're doing something and makes the other half resent the waste of money and resistant to possibly more persuasive arguments in the future. It makes people from ATTP to Obama storm about insulting sceptics when they should be thinking 'bloody hell, I'd better tread carefully, we're going to need everyone pulling together. Pissing off at least half the population before we've even reduced CO2 a single ppm is a bit stupid."
Neither side believes CO2 will lead to serious harm. Sceptics are just more honest about their true feelings.
The problem ATTP is that you only "point out that what some might infer from that message isn't consistent with the best evidence available" when it suits your private agenda.
It's fun to see you twist and turn to accomplish this but that's about it. Besides, I still think you are a "denier" like the rest of us.
it is always fun to see ATTP twist and turn and wriggle and writhe. How many of his replies start with " I did not mean that" or "you hve misunderstood me". in other words, he is claiming the meme of "bad communication of "the science" TM.
But it comes down to wanting people to act as if the very worst projections of those GCMs are right. Whereas most people have seen after a couple of decades that the GCMs are worthless. So we just get on with dealing with the stuff that weather throws at us, as we have always done. OK we build a seawall if we can afford to. We cut down on those lignite-burning power stations because of those black fumes....except that Germany has started to build them again....oh well...another failure for Steph Rams and his useful idiots.
Watched this thread play out. Almost everyone on this thread rebuting less than fact based comments from ATTP, themselves worded to provoke further comment. All hijacked from the original post theme. Presumably ATTP venting here because no one of any knowledge in these debates bothers ober at his own blog.
Shows best ( unfettered speech, unlike RealClimate or SKS or Sou) and worst (monumental waste of time and space) of internet dialog. Good news is that dispassionate observers can read, judge, and conclude. Facts 'verifiable', opinions identifiable, with all the shadings in between as JC's hiighlight from Peter Lee's essay noted in the original post note. Not that I agree fully with JC's interpretation of Lee's essay, for reasons given over at JC's.
Rud,
Not disagreeing with what you say, but I actually enjoy reading the replies to "And Then There's Physics" ( I know I shouldn't). Especially from TinyCO2.
On another thread he, ATTP, richocheted off 'ocean acidification'. Any port in a storm, I guess.
I see an "And Then There's Chemistry" in his future.
Climate sensitivity? Ego sensitivity. Do not forget there are very subtle, well educated trolls. He really isn't worth the effort. His ego is just stealing all your energies. He is very good at it. I didn't learn much about the science, but I learnt a lot about how a clever person can manipulate people.
Too often the balance has fallen to "being effective" which has the bonus outcome of substantial grants.
I can't help but notice how Nic Lewis so effectively ignores attp as he realises that the man has nothing positive to offer ... like he's been sent here by the Great Climate Jedi™ to disrupt proceedings with strange and obtuse reasoning ;-)
Quite entertaining really to witness the 'intellectual' jousting.
Some characteristics of borderline Aspergers...
⚫ average or above-average intelligence
⚫ difficulties with high-level language skills such as verbal reasoning, problem solving, making inferences and predictions
⚫ difficulties in empathising with others
⚫ problems with understanding another person’s point of view
⚫ difficulties engaging in social routines such as conversations and ‘small talk’
⚫ problems with controlling feelings such as anger, depression and anxiety
⚫ a preference for routines and schedules which can result in stress or anxiety if a routine is disrupted
⚫ specialised fields of interest or hobbies.
"symptoms of Asperger's syndrome have some overlap with those of schizophrenia"
media hoar, I re-read ATTP's response to Lewis. He mealy-mouths his own apology by adding riders to it and concludes by saying it was Lewis' fault who he says should have been more clear! Incredible.
I had to repeat, about three times, that the costs of attempting mitigation are real, immediate and represent a certainl level of present-day harm, regardless of future benefit (or no benefit). He gives me an analogy that says "If, however, it just meant reducing your savings a little you'd probably go ahead". In other words, I'm not sure he read what I wrote and in short order and likely to blame me for 'not being clear'.
Shub,
Good grief, nothing's ever good enough for you. Tell me something. Do you spend some amount of time engaging pleasantly and then realise that you haven't insulted someone you're meant to dislike and so go ahead and do so? That's certainly how it seems. Every now and again I go, "oh, maybe Shub's actually alright" and then you go and remind me why I banned you in the first place.
Yes, I apologised which is a damn site more than anyone else seems to ever do. Yes, it was a little mealy-mouthed given that I don't think I'd actually attacked Nic Lewis in the first place. I'm starting to think that there's an inverse correlation between how sensitive some think our climate is and how sensitive they are themselves. For a site that specialises in attacking climate scientists, you all get very defensive if someone deigns to criticise someone with whom you broadly agree. And people wonder why it's regarded as an anti-science hate site. Hard to see why that isn't an apt description.
Also, how can me acknowledging that I may have misunderstood Nic's position be perceived as me blaming him. If I do understand Nic's position I still disagree with it, but at least I may understand why he's presenting things the way he seems to be. Why not try reading what I actually write, rather than what you thought I wrote?
Yes, I agree with that but I still don't see how that means that scenario 1 and 4 are equivalent. However, I'm happy not to understand as the tiny amount of patience I still have is about to disappear and I'd hate to start really behaving like those who normally comment here.
Martin,
I think you may be repeating yourself a little. I sincerely hope that you were a vocal critic of the retraction of the Recursive Fury paper because, if not, you're a raging hypocrite.
Call it bad faith, bad blood whatever. I initially read your response to Nic and had missed the sentence I quoted. It did appear to me that you were insinuating that Lewis should say "yeah sensitivity could be high" just one more time. To me it looked like an attempt to extract words from someone's mouth for political purposes.
Maybe I read too much into it. You wrote the words, you be the judge.
My own understanding of Lewis' work, the Lewis and Crok report and 'how it was presented' parallels anonym's comment on this thread. As I said before, if all authors of sensitivity studies are to adopt the precuationary mode as you seem to suggest, they would all have to customarily mention the lowest and the highest estimate for sensitivity every time.
Remember - Lewis' work and comments came in a pre-existing context where poor underlying assumptions had caused some key papers to fatten up the right tails in sensitivity estimation. Lewis showed through his work that this was not the case. In your comments here and in posts on your blog - you always seem to gloss over this crucial aspect.
*Prior to Lewis, and other similar studies, the confidence of the climate establishment in the certainty of higher sensitivity was higher*. The position of the IPCC and the climate orthodoxy was 'sensitivity is definitely high' and *not* 'high values cannot be ruled out'. At that time, even higher values like 4-6 C were in the 'cannot be ruled out' bracket. The arguments and positions of climate consensus supporters and the low sensitivity -aligned lukewarmer/sceptics has flipped. Do you see the irony here? **Not too long ago - positions and people aligned with you were stressing the most-likely values, just like you say Lewis does now**
ATTP, I know there are nastygrams flying around and it is not easy to keep commenting straight, you can take my comment above an example of a failure if you would like, but my own view is that you are doing a good job. I also think you brought Nic Lewis because something bothers you, and not because you wanted to 'troll'. That's what people do. I hope you review the recent events in history of how Lewis worked, in trying to get data and figure out underlying assumptions, and how long it took and the context in which the Otto et al and the L&C report came out, in figuring out why his comments - whatever they may be - must have sounded one-sided to you. Lewis had some strong words for the practice of keeping high-sensitivity values afloat with the tweak of a few parameters followed by their climb in policy-influencing IPCC reports. His work and others', redresses an imbalance that was present.
8:58, 9:35,10.23.
tea break
11:33,12:10,12:41,1:09,1:42.
lunch
2:30,3:01,3:22,3:36,3:53,3:55,4:07,4:35,4:36.
home, dinner, shower
6:23,7:06,7:13,7:23,8:40,8:42,9:07,9:20,9:23,9:30,9:43, 10:07,10:31.
bed.
at it again
8:47
Look people, if you have something interesting to say about either Lee's paper or Judith Curry's take on it, the please submit them. Chances are, they will be broadly in agreement. Most of those who read them will agree, leaving little more to be said. That comments have drifted away from a dead end is not a problem that should cause so many people to try and stop the detour. So if you don't want to read ATTP's comments or the replies, stop reading them!
ATTP should read Lee's very thoughtful paper because it expresses a lot of what we think about climate science. He may find himself thinking 'but sceptics do all these things too' and I can't say that he'd be 100% wrong. Lewis's work is not amongst those, a point which ATTP seems to now concede. The important thing for both sides is to understand where the other side is coming from.. Personally I think Lee hits the nail on the head, ATTP may disagree but we'll never find out because a) he'll never bother to read it and b) he'll never get to expound his view uninterrupted by "DNFTT".
Martin,
I think you may be repeating yourself a little. I sincerely hope that you were a vocal critic of the retraction of the Recursive Fury paper because, if not, you're a raging hypocrite.
Dec 19, 2014 at 8:47 AM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics
Fizz,
I can't comment on the Lew paper - I have not read it. Wasn't it withdrawn for not complying with the ethical standards normal in its field - identifying subjects, using people as subjects without their informed permission or something like that?
I'll shut up about Asperrgers after this comment
I have noticed that several times over the past year or two, a commenter will turn up on BH and their comments can be characterised as:
- Coming from a conviction that most commenters on BH (and the Bish himself) are completely incorrect in their views on human-casued climate change.
- Often showing incomprehension as to how such views can possibly be held.
- Posting comments to point out what they see as inconsistencies or errors in what BH or other commenters have said. Often posed in a way that is interpreted as provocative by other BH commenters, who then respond themselves.
- The poster then follows up comments with further argument. This is then frequently interpreted by other BH commenters as derailing the thread - "trolling". Since the thread becomes dominated by the poster's comments and replies to their comments, that's correct in a way. Though I don't myself beleive there is any interntion to derail the thread - they just want to make their comments and reply to replies to their comments.
I know a couple of borderline Aspergers people quite well and could not help noticing that some of the characteristics of people with Asperger's syndrome seem consistent with the behaviour displayed by the commenters of the type that I have mentioned.
- Average or above-average intelligence
- Displaying an obsessive level of interest in the discussion - illustrated by the sheer number of their comments and replies.
- Difficulties with high-level language skills (eg asking for expressions in plain English to be explained}
- Difficulties in empathising with others
- Problems with understanding another person’s point of view
- Specialised field of interest
I asked another commenter of the type I have described if they might be borderline Aspergers and they responded that they thought they probably were. Others have had occupations that Aspergers people do well in - writing low level microprocessor code for example which again seemed in line with what I had noticed.
As I said, I'll drop it now.
Martyn wins the thread.
Reading too much into motives, Martin A. Sometimes people just don't want to engage in legitimate debate, regardless of any inconsistencies they may face. Their goal is simply one of distraction, or obfuscation. Mann, for example, has been trounced by not only the statistical community itself, but his own home, the IPCC. The latter offered the worst rebuttal ever; they ignored him. Yet, on he rides, lance in hand, tilting at any windmill in his path. We all spend our energy fighting these idiots while the rest of the cogniscenti have "moved on," happy we no longer care about the latest sleight of hand. He serves his purpose, a useful idiot.
Mark
Just a little harmless intuitive fun if you're interested Martin:-
http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/engineering/staff/py99mee
Martyn, did the times noted include other BH threads, or just this one?
Haha.
"EPSRC's Strategic Plan committed us to providing greater support to the world-leading individuals who are delivering the highest quality research to meet UK and global priorities."
"...His research focused on the creation of future design weather years for the period 2020 to 2080 using recent projections of climate change as released by United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme and the MetOffice and the impacts of climate change on the built environment."
Martin
I'm almost sure 2hrs of reading/posting on this thread during the 9-5 day job comes within the remit of providing greater support to the world-leading blah blah blah ie the Met Office but whether he's your guy is still open to debate.
Martyn, do you figure what's set off ATTP's reaction?
It is to be found here: https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/awol
I dragged out this thread by discussing Nic Lewis and 'risk management' and I feel foolish.
Shub
I figure ATTP as just wanting to win arguments on BH type sites that he obviously dislikes. He didn't seem bothered about ifs buts and caveats and has it in his mind that everything from the climate wizards is the be all and end all. I guess he has had some involvement with the wizards and thinks the sun shines from their sphincter. Just an opinion though.
The only thing ATTP brought to this site was his ego. I read the style of his comments and his blog. And I thought 'Who the **** is he?". His idea of engagement is to patronise, but in a very subtle way. He believes he is the most important poster on this site, and when we all do not bow down before him, he takes his ego with him. He was manipulating threads such that he became the centre of each one. He was more polite less dogmatic than BBD, had less "self importance" than Dana, but interestingly they are his frequent friends on his blog. All came here to show their superiority, and the error of our ways. They can all massage each others ego at their leisure. Forgive us if here is out of that comfort zone.
BH and commenters do not need these guys condescension, approval or acceptance. They think otherwise.
The world is changing, so is the blogosphere. My money is on BH and its parners/seeds/genes being around and having a greater impact than the smug closed world of ATTP and his friends.
ATTP, you want to engage? then leave your ego at the door.
I have written a response to ATTP et al here: More bitter bile ..and then there's physics
The following is from an article in Nature following the recent emergence of a view amongst some physicists that in cosmology if a theory is sufficiently elegant and compelling it should be accepted without being subject to empirical verification by experiment and/or observation. This view has arisen because some elements of cosmological theory are not susceptible to such empirical testing.
It could just as easily have been written about anthropogenic CO2 driven Climate Change
"We agree with theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder: post-empirical science is an oxymoron. Theories such as quantum mechanics and relativity turned out well because they made predictions that survived testing. Yet numerous historical examples point to how, in the absence of adequate data, elegant and compelling ideas led researchers in the wrong direction, from Ptolemy's geocentric theories of the cosmos to Lord Kelvin's 'vortex theory' of the atom and Fred Hoyle's perpetual steady-state Universe.
The consequences of over claiming the significance of certain theories are profound — the scientific method is at stake. To state that a theory is so good that its existence supplants the need for data and testing in our opinion risks misleading students and the public as to how science should be done and could open the door for pseudo-scientists to claim that their ideas meet similar requirements.
The issue boils down to clarifying one question: what potential observational or experimental evidence is there that would persuade you that the theory is wrong and lead you to abandoning it? If there is none, it is not a scientific theory".