Tuesday
Mar312015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill A lack of self-awareness
Mar 31, 2015 BBC Climate: Sceptics Climate: Surface I caught most of Costing the Earth today, in which some of the problems with mainstream climate science were discussed. It featured a bunch of alarmists and ex-alarmists discussing aspects of the science that they had until quite recently decried sceptics for mentioning. Towards the end they wondered whether sceptics shouldn't perhaps be admitted to the debate. I'm not sure that they quite grasped the irony of this position and certainly, when the presenter asked about sceptics being presented as crackpots, nobody deigned to answer.
Reader Comments (78)
Love it, dangling and undangling a participle in the same sentence. Is that pretentious? Naw, probably just speaking rapidly. Few and far apart are your interesting contributions to things like sensitivity and attribution. Still waiting on the bat signal about sensitivity?
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Ken Rice -- the failure was in the civil aspect of the discussion
The climate debate tends to incivility for two main reasons. i) There has never been a civil (as in public, open, democratic) debate of consequence. Environmentalism was established above democracy. ii) Environmentalism has never developed its own culture of debate or intellectual tradition. So it is no coincidence that environmentalists are cynical of civilisation and its institutions -- democracy being perhaps the thing that environmentalists understand the least.
they just seem to be few and far between.
It shouldn't need pointing out to the physicist that he is the constant factor in each of his interactions. It might be that everybody else's problem, of course. Though it seems to be that rather than trouble following him, he may be the agent of the incivility he feels surrounded by. It's like the drunk, shouting at the world to keep still.
You met some people who are more patient than average, perhaps. Some kindly souls who were not prepared to walk on by... My point stands, I think -- there is a big difference between the style of discussion you seem to be involved in and its substance, and the style and substance of the panel on the radio show.
"It's all the fault of this supposed consensus police; if it wasn't for them everything would be so much better. "
I don't say it's all the fault of anybody. I'm sure if you, SKS and the like of the Grauniads consensus enforcing bloggers were to disappear overnight, some other form of aggressive, hectoring, incoherent campaigning blogger would take their place. I say that we can see that a consensus policing tendency exists. We can see that it is disruptive whenever there is a danger of productive discussion between lukewarm and sceptic arguments meeting. We can say then, that the consensus policing tendency is to prevent civil discussion, across the lines of debate.
You should seriously consider that this [...] is simply nonsense.
I could consider it. But you've supplied no reason for me to consider -- merely a claim that it is. If you think that the broader sceptic argument and the Consensus Police's existence are not as I've described, if you want to debate the point, you'll have to do more than merely claim they are otherwise.
Bish - there seems to be an error in the link in your article. The programme I heard didn't appear to feature any ex-alarmists at all, only a bunch of scientists as convinced as ever about the long term perils.
I listened to the repeat last night and found it quite encouraging to hear quite a bit of rowing back.
That this was accomplished while calling for full steam ahead shouldn't concern us too much.
It was revealing when, in reference to to the pause, Tom Heap (I think) said near the beginning that "things hadn't gone according to plan".
I hadn't realised there was a "plan".
Wasn't it Einstein who said that scientists should set out to test their hypotheses, not to prove them?
All that was lacking among all the caveats was for someone to say: "But I thought the science was settled".
Ben,
I was going to stop, but since you claim such immense ability to see nuance, that others can't, you should be able to see this. This is incorrect,
I made no claim at all. I simply suggested that you should consider it. I shouldn't have to give you a reason. What you say doesn't become credible just because I haven't found a reason why it isn't credible. If you were genuinely skeptical, you would consider the validity of what you said even if I haven't provided a reason for you to do so.
Again, I made no claim. I think it isn't as you describe, but that's just my view and I have no interest in debating it. That would be silly and a waste of time. I don't particularly care. If you want to continue believing as you appear to, carry on. That someone can't be bothered debating the point, doesn't suddenly make the point a valid one. My personal view is that physical reality doesn't care about all these supposed conspiracies.
Ken,
So "physical reality" is all that matters. That's the page we're all on. Stuff you can measure - observations. No fiddled data.
Physical reality then.
It stopped warming last century. The late 20th century warming was at a statistically undifferentiable rate to previous warming phases, None of which could have been influenced by anthropogenic carbon dioxide. There's no measured evidence of deep ocean temperature rise. Global sea ice is increasing. There's no evidence whatsoever of extreme weather events occurring more frequently - and obviously no driver, without any warming (that'll be physics, see?)
No climate refugees. Global crops are increasing. The Sahel is greening.
Physical reality trumps all of your tedious activist verbiage.
SayNoToFearmongers,
Wrong. It's still warming.
So what? The suggestion isn't that anthropodenic CO2 is the only possible way to drive warming. It's simply what's doing it today.
Again, so what? And I'm not even sure this is true. There are certainly estimates. Sea level rise and OHC measurements indicate that the oceans are warming.
Globally, total ice mass is reducing.
Wrong. There are statistically significant increases in extreme precipitation events and possibly heatwaves.
Well, it's still warming.
Apart from all of that, a good point.
It's all so fragile for you, Ken, and increasingly fragile as the pause goes on.
Low sensitivity and greater understanding of attribution are going to be an ongoing problem for the alarmists.
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"There was a lot of sophistry about models being 'not wrong'. "
It's impossible for them to be right!
The mathematical equations for the atmosphere are unsolvable and chaotic. Models don't replicate the continuous nature of the weather, but step through time. This risks stepping over a "tipping point" and racing off into armageddon-conflagration instead of turning around and lowering the temperature.
One mistake is the faith which transposed a simple laboratory finding into a vastly more complicated, and apparently self-regulating system, and expected laboratory conditions to prevail.
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All set up here, and all about the attribution. Might as well confront the argument; it's not going away.
Even if we are accruing all of the expected increased Watt/meter squared, it seems to be sequestering in the ocean, where it can't come out until the surface cools. And there is still no proof it is so sequestering, and gathering evidence it's been radiated back out.
Plenty more; come on, come on.
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You assume CO2 caused the warming and then point to the effects of warming as proof of your assumption. Do you see the circularity, Ken? Now I understand the utility of circularity in understanding phenomena on a huge range of physical scales, but its use in human logic, in causation, in this case, is simply invalid.
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The higher the sensitivity, the colder we would now be without man's effect. You'd better hope that the recovery from the coldest depths of the Holocene was predominantly from natural causes, 'cuz if man's done the heavy lifting of warming, we can't keep it up much longer.
Ponder those lovely little curves for a bit.
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Ken Rice - since you claim such immense ability to see nuance, that others can't
I make no such claim. I say that you consensus enforcers have made it your job to polarise the debate and sustain that polarisation. Nuance being anathema to the polar view of the debate, which divides into magical proportions like "97%". Your verbal and logical acrobatics follow, as you try, post hoc, to make sense of what is ultimately a senseless, unsustainable division of the debate into cartoon categories. Also what follows, naturally, is your constant promises to flounce off, because the behaviour here is so despicable and predictable, as your comments at your own blog and here show.
I made no claim at all. I simply suggested that you should consider it.
I had nothing to consider except your claim that it was something to consider. It is axiomatic that any argument made in a discussion could be wrong. But you gave me no reason to consider, except the wrongness itself.
We could do the same with *any* scientific claim -- which only has provisional truth. In fact it's a good bet that all "science" is wrong, because on the same basis, we can expect better science to follow. The point is how one gets from one hypothesis towards better theory. The same is true of debate.
"If you were genuinely skeptical,...."
If you were remotely interested in discussion, you'd understand that you're the one is supposed to supply the debate with a better view. I'm not going to do your job for you.
that's just my view and I have no interest in debating it.
As we suspected. Your view is your view, and not subject to (or of) debate or challenge. Off limits. Personal information. Protected. Privileged. So why mention it? So why even bring it up? What do you think you're doing?
My personal view...
Who cares? So what? What difference is there between your personal view, and your preferred breakfast? If you don't offer your view for debate, it's of no consequence.
Ken wants to take issue with my understanding of the geometry of the debate. I must consider that I am wrong, he says, though he gives no reason why I should think so. Here are the propositions, then.
i) There consensus police divide the debate into scientists and deniers, with very little nuance between these categories, who divide as the 97% and 3%.
ii) Ken works closely with (in the sense that he shares insight and sympathies with) these consensus enforcers across many websites and fora, in a group centred around the SkS project.
iii) There is an emergent middle ground of 'lukewarmer', and reflection from with the green/climate milieu on the failures of their campaign and of climate science.
iv) The consensus enforces are hostile to this debate, and any apparent concession given to the putative 3%. This includes publishing or quoting 3%ers favourably, broadcasting them, or admitting them to the debate at all.
v) The consensus forces are arguably disruptive where there is productive debate across the 97%-3% divide. This appears to be intended to discipline the 97%, and to force the 3% into hostile debate.
vi) Any criticism of institutional science or of the consensus police's tendencies will be called a 'conspiracy theory'.
vii) Ultimately, the consensus enforcers are hostile to debate at all.
There's plenty more. But that's a start. And these are my 'personal view', but open for debate. And they are based on my experiences of the debate.
They are pertinent to this discussion, I think, because that ugly tendency is what gave rise to the things discussed in the radio show. Mark Lynas, you will remember, began life by throwing custard pies at people with the wrong views, and trying to have them barred from campuses rather than engaging them in the debate. Mike Hulme's own views shifted remarkably over the years, though he never checked pies at people. The other participants noted that the debate was hostile, but that the criticism they received was nonetheless useful. This, I would suggest, puts Ken and his colleagues on a different axis in the debate to those people.
Ben Pile -
You might appreciate some of Tom Fuller's thoughts on what he calls the "Klimate Konsensus", e.g. this post et seq.
Ben,
I don't really want to take issue. I don't really care, which is essentially my point. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter.
My only reason for making my earlier comment was to point out that you were mis-interpreting what I had said in the (probably unlikely) hope that you would acknowledge that you had done so and stop doing so. That you have done neither really tells me all I need to know.
Well, I'm not really, which is kind of my point. I'm not sure why the onus is on me to supply the debate with a better view. I get the impression that you think this is the case, but quite why you'd think that is beyond me.
And then there's Kenny,
You make my point perfectly. Observations trump fantasies, and if people fiddle data in my field, they are sacked.
Why do you even bother? Repeating lies brings them no nearer to the truth. We all know it's not warming - please give us the benefit of your allegedly enormous learning to tell us why those 66 'climate science' excuses for the pause were all delusional.
Or is it you?
SayNoToFearmongers,
This statement is simply wrong, on many levels. That noone here has explained this to you before is no great surprise, but that doesn't make it right.
Ken says "I don't really care, which is essentially my point". But then he says that I was "mis-interpreting what [he] had said" and that he wanted me to acknowledge it and stop it.
You're a walking contradiction, Ken.
If you don't really care, so what if you were 'misinterpreted'? If you don't think the debate, or interpretations matter, why offer your view in the first instance?
I don't think Ken's contradictions can be underestimated. He wants to be sure that he has been faithfully interpreted, and that any misconception of his argument is deliberate misinterpretation, not his responsibility to correct, per the conventions of debate.
this is, I think, a common trait amogst the green tendency. A whopping, narcissistic sense of entitlement, and aversion to the idea that he should be held to account for his argument and its consequences. If we are concerned that his argument (x) implies (y), then we're in the wrong for suggesting it, no matter whether or not x in fact implies y. Ken is satisfied that he is unimpeachable, so he doesn't mean (y). No further discussion necessary, except to bang on about what rotters we are for suggesting x=y.
Ben,
I don't particularly care, but I'm not going to waste any more of my time in a discussion with someone who does so and doesn't think it matters.
Hmmm, my decision to not waste my time in discussions with someone who misinterprets what I say doesn't mean I don't think the debate matters in general.
You can't really be this stupid, can you?
Ken Rice: "You can't really be this stupid, can you?"
And there we have it. To attempt to hold Ken Rice to account for his argument is to be stupid.
There is a remarkable duality at work here. On the one end we have Ken's argument from Humpty Dumpty -- that words mean whatever he wants them to mean. And at the other end, this resistance to debate is mirrored in the democrat deficit that characterises climate politics.
The consensus enforcers are perhaps pathologically hostile to debate.
Ken Rice : "...my decision to not waste my time in discussions..."
It's like the ceci n'est pas une pipe of climate enforcement. The treachery of climate alarmism.
Ben,
You could have just said "No". I would have believed you. I don't think you are this stupid, but why you seem to want to behave as if you are is what's beyond me.
Ken Rice - ....I don't think you are this stupid, but why you seem to want to behave as if you are is what's beyond me...
You prefer to talk about these things than the substance of the debate and its issues. Because, of course, you are hostile to debate as such. Because, of course, you don't think there is a debate to be had.
You can take issue with the schema of the debate as it was offered. Or you can refuse to. But refusing to says much more about you than it says about me. Consensus enforcement is trolling, writ large.
And Then There's Physics, it seems that your attempt to keep conversation civil amounts to censoring the comments of those who disagree with you (myself included), while allowing bats**t crazy commenters like BBD to deny science.
Planet 3 tried to do pretty much the same thing, but failed for want of an audience. Joey Romm ended up having the comments section surgically removed from his blog, more or less at the same time that it was mercifully wrapped under the umbrella of Think Progress and more sensible interns were given the reins.
Explain how your blog is anything but an echo chamber.
C'mon Ken, there's real meat in this discussion of sensitivity. I know you've just been thrown the scraps from the Ringberg Banquet Hall, but perhaps there's a few tasty morsels straight from the kitchen over here.
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