Wednesday
Sep032014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day, ditch the scientific method edition
Sep 3, 2014 Climate: Models You’re allowed to say, well I think we should do nothing. That’s a policy choice. But what you’re not allowed to do is to claim there’s a better estimate of the way that the climate will change, other than the one that comes out of the computer models. It’s nonsensical to say ‘we know better’, you can’t know better.
Professor Brian Cox appears averse to the idea that data trumps hypothesis.
Reader Comments (99)
Professor Cox obviously does not understand how computers work and what they can, and cannot, do.
Excellent point, ANH. He seems to think that computers generate knowledge, rather than just doing much faster what we can already do with a pencil and paper.
Prof. Cox seems unaware that the models are wrong and have been so for a long time. Richard Betts states clearly that they are not a good basis for climate policy. He seems to be in denial about reality: Reality has not agreed with the models for a number of years.
Yet another diversion article. They're taking over at the G. There's so many articles these days openly attacking those who dare to question the orthodoxy or who hold an alternative viewpoint.
Meanwhile in the real world their pet theory is disintegrating fast across all major parameters. Shame. No wonder they're squealing so loudly.
Back in March a friend an hi fi enthusiast sent me this from twitter, its Brian Cox showing off to everyone his valve amplification. Now in Hi Fi valve amps are known for their warm musical sound but blimey they are so inefficient and produce so much heat so in summer you sweat listening to them just for a few watts.
https://twitter.com/profbriancox/status/449651962666307584
I did point out to Mr Cox that it is well known that valves just waste most of the electric consumption as pure heat and are extremely inefficient in turning energy into sound and it was rather rich that such a BBC believer in 97%consenus of science on AGW would waste energy in this way. He did reply trying to be humorous by saying that his electrons for the valve amp was purely from Nuclear
Now I'm a AGW sceptic but I gave up my valves Amps for a French transistor amp purely because I thought it was so wasteful to waste energy and yet here we have Mr Cox always spouting against the AGW sceptic bragging to his adoring fans (Guardian readers no doubt) about his co2 producing valve amplification. Now I know its a small thing but when me the sceptic feels they are wasteful and here we have AGW Bandwagon rolling pretty boy cox doing the very opposite after preaching and chastising everyone else for energy wastage. It really goes to show the persistent hypocrisy of these smug left liberal know it all's.
Post scripts: looking at the twitter exchange my two twitter comments were deleted by Mr Cox
Cheshirered CIF is best left to its own self-satisfaction circle jerk on this subject , ever since that brought the 97% crew on board its turned into little more than a closed shop for the 'faithful' who never get the irony of claiming that 'deniers' , a stupid insulting and anti scientific term their addicted to , are all conspiracy nuts who are the pay of a fossil fuel funded 'conspiracy'
It strikes me that Brian Cox could well take a lesson from Pope Francis on how to evaluate scientific information. The following is from a press conference 'question and answer' session after the Pope's recent trip to South Korea:
Q. There’s been talk for a long time about an encyclical on ecology. Could you tell us when it will be published, and what are the key points?
A. I have talked a lot about this encyclical with Cardinal Turkson, and also with other people. And I asked Cardinal Turkson to gather all the input that have arrived, and four days before the trip, Cardinal Turkson brought me the first draft. It’s as thick as this. I’d say it’s about a third longer than Evangelii Gaudium. It’s the first draft. It’s not an easy question because on the custody of creation, and ecology, also human ecology,one can talk with a certain security up to a certain point, but then the scientific hypotheses come, some sufficiently secure, others not. And in an encyclical like this, which has to be magisterial, one can only go forward on the things that are sure, the things that are secure. If the Pope says the centre of the universe is the earth and not the sun, he’s wrong because he says a thing that is scientifically not right. That’s what happens now. So we have to do the study now, number by number, and I believe it will become smaller. But going to the essentials, to that which one can affirm with security. One can say, in footnotes, that on this there is this and that hypothesis, to say it as information but not in the body of an encyclical that is doctrinal. It has to be secure.
http://cvcomment.org/2014/08/19/pope-francis-press-conference-on-papal-plane-from-seoul-full-transcript/
Don't wish to over egg and all that but here's the brief twitter conversation with the BBC's golden boy
https://twitter.com/LawrenceTJ13/status/450589625283665920
Lawrence13
Ah... hifi buff / musician and electronics....?
It certainly looks like Bwian prefers to emote rather than measure - or something like that - and that fits right in with the prevailing BBC / Guardian mindset as does the expunging of contrariness.
Lawrence13, thanks for that. As a music fiend (although sadly ignorant of hi-fi technicalities), I agree that the hypocrisy of the show-biz crowd is nauseating.
The Strolling Bones have a Jumbo-Jet and who knows how many trucks to make their tours happen. And, let's not even get started on the lights, sound and other infrastructure needed for a single concert.
Good for them, I say.
And, since your twitter comments were deleted by Cox, it gives you an idea of the totalitarian mindset that you are up against.
Rock On!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liWIbE1gQTk
Bishop please remind prof Cox about the neutrino faster than light disaster at his alma mater. If I remember correctly it was fokead by an elementary mistake missed by 100 of the best.
I have no doubt you will be somewhat upset to learn that Richard Betts has made a guest post somewhere that is not here!
but here - http://climaterevolution.co.uk/wp/2014/09/03/pooh-sticks-pauses-and-predictability/
Sep 3, 2014 at 8:44 PM | Unregistered CommenterH2O: the miracle molecule
Richard obviously decided to boost his scientific credibility by moving up to a heavy duty science publication…
…… or perhaps the Met Office are lining up Vivienne for the Senna the Soothsayer part when Julia retires.
"Vivienne's Diary" gives a pretty crisp summary of the state-of-the-art in the climate world. She certainly gives you plenty to think about, in a weird headache inducing sort of way.
Apparently we just have to rise up, throw off our chains and stop fracking to end war and injustice forever…. and stuff.
There's a certain aromatic whiff about the site that brings back memories of the early 70s.
I hope Richard doesn't inhale.
Brian Cox and Iain Stewart have long since given up any pretence at being scientists, they are well paid BBC entertainers! So they are not in a position to add anything sensible to the climate debate!
"...what you’re not allowed to do is to claim there’s a better estimate of the way that the climate will change, other than the one that comes out of the computer models."
Not "allowed to"?
Oh, and since the climate models agree on nothing, except on the fact that they don't agree, can Herr Professor express a preference for any particular computer model?
I don't know which is the most depressing, the fact that Britain's most well-known scientist thinks that “the scientific view” is “an absolutism” and that “it’s clearly a bad thing for knowledge to be controversial”, or the fact that Richard Betts is writing at Vivienne Westwood's Climaterevolution site.
Vivienne is slightly less ignorant than Cox on scientific matters, but she still can't be counted an expert. See the transcript of a speech on climate science which Vivienne gave to the European Commission at
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20111206_vw
The Guardian has followed up the Cox article with one expressing the ideas of Britain's second most famous scientist, Sir Paul Nurse
"Offenders in the media” who must be “crushed and buried” - that's fascist talk. Is Nurse a fascist? Is there a member of the Royal Society, or any other figure in the scientific world, willing to ask Sir Paul exactly who he wants to see “crushed and buried”?http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/04/sir-paul-nurse-criticises-figures-distort-scientific-evidence
Idiot x 2.
Sorry. I misread the key paragraph I quoted above. It's not “offenders in the media” that Nurse wants crushed and buried, but rather “influential figures” that he wants “called out in the media”.
I think he means Lord Lawson. If he wants to “crush and bury” Lord Lawson then he should say so. Then he should be prosecuted for threatening behaviour or something, and should resign from the presidency of the Royal Society while the case is proceeding. If it's not Lord Lawson, then he should say who it is he means.
If he refuses to say who he wants to see “crushed and buried” I suggest that a petition be started among potentially “influential figures” who might be potential targets of the “crush and bury” policy suggested by the President of the Royal Society. They might be journalists, scientists, academics, blog owners or simple blog commenters. We might call upon the Royal Society to express an opinion on their President's “crush and bury” policy, or we might go further and institute some kind of legal proceedings against Nurse, or the Guardian. Threatening to crush and bury people who disagree with you goes far beyond the norms of political discourse in a civilised society. Is the President of the Royal Society exempt from obedience to those norms?
I've been arguing unsuccessfully here and elsewhere for ages in favour of the creation of a popular sceptical movement; we don't have the movement, but thanks to Sir Paul Nurse, we have a name: “Crush and Bury Us”.
"...the one that comes out of the computer models"
Has Cox ever seen a spaghetti graph?
Green Sand wrote: It is quite standard fare for the politically-motivated to assume that anybody who questions any aspect of their ideology is also motivated politically.
And they tend to accuse "opponents" of doing nefarious things that they themselves are doing.
Brian Cox is fatuous. He is a cut price Carl Sagan who unlike Sagan can't write, is a dreary presenter who is pushed and pushed by the BBC machine. In the end he shows no originality, just a desperation to stay famous.
Ptolemy was correct about the solar system as he had the best available model.
Copernicus didn't make Ptolemy wrong, only outdated.
Truth is how we see the world, not as it is.
My (typically radical) opinion is that climate science falls on its face before models. The numbers just aren't there to plug into the models. I would suggest that accurate numbers aren't there from the 1990s never mind the 1490s.
More than that, the pause may have come from rascals like NASA GISS not being able to manipulate the ground station data. See A. Watt's heat island effect etc. I am not putting that forward as 'the truth', simply a possibility.
@Josh : Sep 3, 2014 at 5:28 PM
You may not have explicitly published your Brian Cox cartoon here, but it's embedded in the following post:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/12/3/the-orwellian-solution.html
(and it fills the #58 slot that is missing in His Grace's "Josh" category - I think I've dug most of them out - Great Stuff)
OUH
The analogy made above between Cox and Sagan is quite important. This is because the fundamental mistakes that led to the Science Disaster of Climate Alchemy were from Sagan whop made two bad mistakes in basic physics**. These have poisoned the well of the atmospheric sciences for 50 years now and dolts like Cox have been taught incorrect physics, although he is clearly astute enough to know this. The trouble is, the IPCC's peer reviewed block means it is next to impossible to overturn the bad physics by normal publishing of real science.
**1 To confuse radiative emittance (aka exitance) with a real energy flux when it is the potential flux to a sink at 0 deg K.
2 Sagan got the aerosol physics wrong; the sign of the AIE is reversed.
"It’s nonsensical to say ‘we know better’, you can’t know better."
Since noone is saying 'we know better', this is just a diversionary strawman of Cox's.
He does in general seems to have a blank-stare credulous truebeliever stance on the climate alarmism I've noticed.
The whole field of hifi was swamped by a tsunami of bullshit decades ago. Cox is happily swimming in it evidently.
I agree with you, and I don't think your opinion is particularly radical. The more I look at the climate history and data, the more certain I am that of the 1C warming in the last 100 years, only 0.25C at the most is due to extra CO2, the rest is just the long slow thaw from the LIA, UHI and dodgy station selection, dubious data adjustments and homogenisation.
Lubos Motl has his measure...
http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/09/brian-coxs-incompetence.html
It is utterly irrelevant how many top scientists disagree with mother nature! This happens all the time in science and is part of the process of scientific discovery. I work with models all the time and if you enter false assumptions in a model then you get the wrong answer, far from the 'best' answer, it can often be the worst. What mindless clot could think that models somehow correct out poor assumptions? After 15 years denying the temperature plateau the consensus has now rediscovered the natural variation that skeptics had said was there but which was utterly dismissed in a collective and politically-motivated, anti-fossil-fuel fervour. With that key assummption being wrong there is no scientific way of declaring any manmade warming at all. All they have left is a pessimistic gut feeling. Common sense should tell them they should be more skeptical by now but their sheer arrogance doesn't allow that.
A quote from Prof. Cox a couple of years ago:
Now, many (including Lubos) have pointed out flaws in Brian's understanding of QM. However that's not what is I think is relevant here.
What I find amazing about this is the bit I emboldened. Brian apparently thinks that something is "literally true" if some current theory says that it is true, but is prepared to change this truthness if the theory changes.
With this world view, it was "literally true" that the Sun orbited the Earth prior to it being shown to be not true. And CAGW is also "literally true" - and hence his view that "you can’t know better" - until you do, that is.
So sad that David Bellamy got 'blackballed' because he hadn't read the script...
Betts says
http://climaterevolution.co.uk/wp/2014/09/03/pooh-sticks-pauses-and-predictability/
However, just because short-term forecasts are hard to make, this does not mean that we can say nothing about the long-term effects of pushing the climate system by altering its radiation balance with more greenhouse gases
The pause is 15+ years. So by short-term he means whle he is working. By long-term he means, after he has retired.
He can't lose. He get away with it by saying
While in the long term, putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will inevitably cause the planet to continue to warm, in the shorter term the effects of natural climate variability tend to dominate.
More CO2 will INEVITABLY cause the plant to warm.
Inevitable means predestined. That not science. However it is, unfortunately the dominant view of those who comment at Bishop Hill.
12:34 AM geoffchambers
Viv Westwood addressed the European Commission on the subject of climate??
O... M... G...
I'd missed that ......
That's just mad - simply bonkers.
I think he is making a point along similar lines to the argument that leeches were best practice in the middle ages since there were no better treatments available, therefore a fully justifiable medical procedure.
Foxgoose
I had no idea that Climate Revolution was the home of a fashionista! Looks like His Grace will need to start knocking out some overpriced hand bags.
It is appalling to see such a prominent physicist corrupted by political correctness. Has he spent so much time now in media circles rather than in scientific ones that his mind has been lost?
The malaise really is general. Divvy nations, populated by deluded, blind ideologues.
This would be funny if it were not for the death, starvation and suffering created by the whole soggy mess.
Some days I despair of it ever being exposed and seeing all the willfully ignorant creatures scuttling away from the light when their rock is overturned.
Roger Clague
Handwaving is how climate science got to be where it is today.
"CO2 will definitely warm the planet in the long run but natural variation will dominate in the short run" is a gold-plated cop-out.
I have just given up discussing CO2 on the "CO2 thing .." discussion thread because I have concluded that the argument is irrelevant. I no longer care what (if anything) CO2 is reportedly capable of doing because it is patently evident that it isn't doing it and I see no evidence that it ever will.
There are a good number of anal-retentives around the place who have all sorts of differing mathematical explanations about what is happeninjg (except that it isn't) and what is going to happen, except that the arguments contradict each other half the time and the other half appear designed to show how clever their proponent is rather than to leave ignorami like me any wiser.
(Don't ever try asking any of them a straight question unless you enjoy playing 'Find the Lady'!)
Sep 4, 2014 at 1:39 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson
it is patently evident that it isn't doing it and I see no evidence that it ever will.
But Betts sees the evidence, in his models, and he is calling the shots
I no longer care what (if anything) CO2 is reportedly capable of doing
The only way to stop Betts is to show by basic physics that CO2 is not and never has done anything, in the past, now or over the next 100 years to the climate.
That is sites like Tallbloke and principia-scientific.org.
Lukewarmers are part of the problem not the solution
I cannot get my head around a scientist, especially a physicist, who thinks science is absolute?
Sep 4, 2014 at 1:39 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson
Totally agree with the seeming irrelevance with small technical details. I'd go with my first simple of model of things are exactly the same now as when I can first remember 'weather' and it is exactly the same. Not a bad model where I'm sure you could quibble about the details but I'm not sure it is a worse model than the others. I assume people who have lived in the same place for those 40 years can actually quote the actual temperature difference recorded in that time.
Leeches weren't "best practice in the Middle Ages because nothing better was available". Their use accorded with the physiological theories of the time, and were considered a gentler method than using a lancet or a phlebotome..
Another interesting telephone number 02079072800 no not another brothel
Brian says " Data trumps Hypothesis so Climate Change needs no further discussion".
Very secretive ,so what they hiding?
Something else he and his agent don't want to discuss how much our Professor Brian OBE charges for an after dinner speaking engagement.
http://www.jla.co.uk/after-dinner-speakers/brian-cox
johanna
"kinda cute and had previously been in a band"
We had a prime minister like that once. Everyone thought he was terrific, at first...
So, Prof. Cox thinks that "... what you’re not allowed to do is to claim there’s a better estimate of the way that the climate will change, other than the one that comes out of the computer models."
Sounds like he's unaware of fundamental disputes in his own scientific discipline (e.g. loop quantum gravity vs string theory), let alone the 'menagerie' of climate models we see in those spaghetti graphs.
I think Jake Haye (Sep 3, 2014 at 8:59 PM) summed him up when he said "Not exactly Richard Feynman is he."
Why is Cox a Professor?
Professor cox really IS a Humpty isn't he (she?)
If it weren't for the cute shirt he would even lose the argument amongst progressive women
http://www.apolloschildren.com/blog-item.php?id=27 Seems it was the consensus he was intending to defend. Not the models...