Intergovernmental Panel on Economics

Ross McKitrick has posted up a paper he wrote ahead of the Lisbon conference on reconciliation among climatologists. It's quite short, but quite pointed. I liked this bit.

Suppose the International Monetary Fund (IMF) created an economics version of the IPCC, which proceeded to issue an Assessment Report and Summary for Policymakers every five years that was promoted as the consensus view of what “every mainstream economist believes.” Suppose further that the IMF was committed to one particular school of economic thought, such as New Keynesianism, that they ensured that all the lead authors of the IMF report were dedicated New Keynesians, and that the report inevitably concluded the New Keynesians are right and their critics are wrong (or do not even exist). And finally, suppose that the IMF report was sponsored and endorsed by government departments who benefited by promotion of New Keynesian ideas, and that major funding agencies and  university oversight agencies also began to endorse, support and promulgate the views in the IMF report.

It should be obvious that all of this would, over time, degrade the intellectual climate in the economics profession. It would do so even if New Keynesianism is true—and moreso otherwise. Members of the research community would be forced to respond to the warped incentives created by such a dominant institution by embracing, or at least paying lip service to, New Keynesianism. Over time it would be costlier and costlier to be publicly identified as a critic of New Keynesianism, and as critics became marginalized by political forces the IMF’s declaration of a “consensus” would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Josh 76

Steig snippets

The reaction to Ryan O'Donnell's article about Steig has been astonishing, and the rate of deletion of comments from Real Climate hasn't been this high for...well...days.

Some interesting stories have emerged from all the noise:

"Threats"

A commenter called CAGW_99 left a comment at RealClimate noting that Steig could find himself called to testify before the House of Representatives.

Click to read more ...

Statistical literacy

An interesting paper by Gerd Gigerenzer et al, looking at statistical illiteracy and what might be done about it. I'm struck by the emphasis on "statistical thinking" and how it is either taught too late, badly or not at all.

Rather like economic thinking, critical thinking and logical thinking.

Gloves come off

Ryan O'Donnell, who always seemed to be the icy cool leader of the team behind the rebuttal of the Steig et al Antarctic paper, shows that he can be pushed too far. His response to Steig's latest posting at Real Climate is a withering rebuke, the likes of which I don't think I have ever seen before.

It's up at Climate Audit and WUWT. Take your pick.

More Singh

A couple of interesting tweets from Simon Singh this morning. Taken to task by a correspondent for a lack of scepticism on AGW, Simon replies as follows:

I'm applying skepticism to the question is AGW significant or not? With my limited tools, my answers is it's happening. [Link]

...and then...

The vast majority of folk smarter & more informed than me come to same answer, which is partly how I arrive at my conclusion. [Link]

Both these points are interesting. Firstly, it's a surprise to see someone with "limited tools" describing people who arrive at a different conclusion to him as "numpties", particularly as many of those people have tools that are considerably less limited.

But secondly, it also appears to me that Singh is an "interpreter of interpretations" as regards climate change, an approach which apparently is reprehensible in the circles in which he moves. To be clear, I have no problem with interpreters of interpretations - as I've noted elsewhere, most people get their opinions like this and it is an entirely respectable way to go about forming an opinion on something. But when one's opinions are formed in this way, I would have thought a little reticence about the name-calling might not go amiss.

(Afterthough: I wonder if Dyson/Happer/the 43 rebels from the Royal Society are included among the numpties?)

Taxonomy

With Simon Singh's somewhat crude contribution to the climate debate still ringing in our ears, my mind turned to an email I received recently on the subject of taxonomy in the climate debate. The message was from David Henderson and contained an excerpt from an article he had written which considered the subject of suitable terms to describe friend and foe alike in this most heated of debates.

It is often claimed that there now exists a world-wide scientific consensus on climate change issues, sometimes described as ‘overwhelming’. I believe that such language is inappropriate; but I think it is correct to say that alongside the official policy consensus (which is a reality), and providing both rationale and support for it, there exists an established body of what I call prevailing scientific opinion.

Predictably, received opinion is not universally shared. It remains subject to challenge by a varied collection of doubters, sceptics, critics and non-subscribers: I will label them collectively as dissenters. Against these, and greatly outnumbering them, are arrayed what I term the upholders of received opinion. Among economists, a clear majority of those who have expressed views on these matters can be classed as upholders.

Within both groups — and this is important to note — there are different schools thought: a whole spectrum of opinions can be identified. Each of the many subject areas, including ours and those of the different sciences involved, has a spectrum of its own. At one end of each spectrum are what may be termed strong or full-blown upholders, the dark greens so to speak. Prominent among these are Lord Stern and the team that worked under him to produce the Stern Review: the Review takes the position that AGW ‘presents very serious global risks and demands an urgent global response’. At the other end of the spectrum, strong dissenters — the dark blues — argue that such warming, if indeed its extent can be shown to be significant, is not a cause for alarm or  concern: hence measures to curb emissions should be eschewed — or discontinued, where they are now in place. In between these two far removed positions, there are upholders and dissenters who hold more limited or qualified beliefs. I count myself as a light-to-medium blue — a limited dissenter, though a firm one.

Up With That Watts!

Watts Up With That? could be about to hit the blogging big time, with a nomination for the Bloggies, the biggest, baddest blog awards on the web.

Here's how to vote.

Click on the WattsUpWithThat thumbnail little grey circle to turn it into a checkmark. Ditto for any other blogs in other categories you want to vote for.

Scroll to bottom, submit your email, complete the captcha phrase.

You'll get a confirmation email - click on that link to verify your vote. I'm told you won't be spammed.

Vote here, right now!

Singh low, sweet skeptic

There has been a conference today of skeptics - that's the Skeptic Society lot -  and one of the star speakers was science writer Simon Singh, fresh from his contretemps with James Delingpole.

As far as I can tell from the tweets, the highlights of his talk were:

• a proposal for a credibility spectrum on climate change, with the Royal Society at one end and Nigel Lawson at the other
• a proposal that us climate sceptics should henceforth be known as "climate numpties".

So, an argument from authority and some name-calling. Is it just me that finds this rather unimpressive from people who claim to be all about science and logic?

(As ever, please don't respond in kind.)

Josh 75

Josh 74

More cartoons by Josh here.

Commenting problems

I realise some of you are still experiencing commenting problems. The issue is in engineering with Squarespace, so your patience is appreciated.

Carbonundrums

More scratching of heads among the chattering classes as they try to work out why nobody believes their global warming propaganda - next week they are all jetting off to Norway for a chat about what to do:

We cordially invite you to the seminar Carbonundrums: From Science to Headlines as well as to the ensuing debate New Realities, New Narratives in Climate Reporting, on Tuesday 8th of February 2011 at Litteraturhuset. We will address important questions such as: How is the press reporting on climate change? What can we learn from Climategate? How should we communicate scientific uncertainty? What determines how people perceive climate change?

Panellists include Fiona Fox, Bob Ward, Roger Harrabin, Fred Pearce, Naomi Oreskes and Rasmus Benestad. That's one very large carbon footprint!

The whole thing will be webcast here.

(H/T Billy)

The big cutoff

Fred Pearce is on the receiving end of the full fury of the warmosphere for his article about the Lisbon conference in New Scientist. Pearce, discussing who agreed to turned up, said this:

But the leaders of mainstream climate science turned down the gig, including NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, who said the science was settled so there was nothing to discuss.

Schmidt has now said that this is not true and that his decision not to attend was rooted in the premises of the conference:

Click to read more ...

Culpability

Another interesting aspect of Emma Jay's letter to James Delingpole. This:

Sir Paul is very aware of the culpability of scientists and that will come across in the film.

Now we need to recognise that the film was almost entirely about Climategate and also that this is Delingpole we are speaking about - he was on the programme purely because of his prominent role in breaking the Climategate story into the mainstream media. So I think there can be little doubt that the scientists Ms Jay is speaking about is Messrs Jones et al.

So, if we are to understand correctly, Sir Paul made this programme about Climategate, in the full recognition of the "culpability" of the scientists and yet said nothing this about his concerns in the programme itself. Indeed he presented a rather chummy interview with Jones, with the UEA man presented as the wronged party. Can this be right? An alternative explanation might be that Ms Jay sexed up the message to Delingpole in order to encourage him to take part, but at the moment we have no way of knowing which explanation is the right one.