Discussion > We are wasting our time; all of it.
Raff - there is nothing wrong with the distribution I gave - the probabilities sum to unity.
But I intended it to be immediately obvious that my example was complete bullshit and nonsense. Quoting a dozen discrete values for what should be a continuous distribution was just the cherry on the cake.
* The distribution gives a four-hundredfold (389.8) predicted mean return over ten years - obviously risible.
* The claim of a fourteen million times return on initial investment with significant probability (p = 0.002) is even more ridiculous and excessive.
* But, above all, the idea that the return from an investment fund ten years ahead can be predicted at all, let alone that its probability distribution can be computed, is just total and complete bollocks.
Despite all the 'peer reviewed' papers on ECS, there is no actual evidence that far future climate can be predicted any better than the stock market.
I was hoping that my $.H.I.T. example it would make it apparent that saying "we just don't know" is very far from agreeing that some specific outcome should be taken seriously when the system in question (either climate or stock market) is incapable of being predicted.
Martin A
Green Sand
Wasting my time has been an ambition for many many years ^.^ However the final victory was achieved when I gave up work. I moved from wasting my time under instructions from an employer who used some deranged logic to decide my actions, to wasting it using my own deranged logic!
Dung
If I may I would like to sort of steer this discussion back to somewhere near its start point hehe:
Recently there has been encouraging news on the energy & climate change front; namely that control of UK fracking and hydrocarbon extraction in general will go to The Oil & Gas Authority Wooo Hoooo. On the other hand nobody is talking about repealing the Climate Change Act which means that nothing can change Booooooo! Also the figures circulating about how much shale gas we have (enough for a few decades) are a truly massive underestimate. I now have no idea what Cameron is trying to achieve?
Dung
Niet, time can never be wasted, not possible....
Jun 7, 2015 at 12:57 AM Green Sand
Somebody has evidently never been to Lidl to buy some lager on a Saturday.
Martin A
Oh Noooooees NOT Green Sand?
I never dreamed he would risk shopping at Liddle!
Dung
"I was hoping that my $.H.I.T. example it would make it apparent that saying "we just don't know" is very far from agreeing that some specific outcome should be taken seriously when the system in question (either climate or stock market) is incapable of being predicted."
It must be "faux seriousness" to make some point. If you don't know what the future will be then there are an infinite, or very large number of possibilities giving a probability very near to zero for each of them, that's GCSE stuff isn't?
Rafa appears to believe that when you look at a PDF of future temperatures you take all your political decisions on the basis of the number that appears to the very right. I don't know WTF he thinks a PDF is for if it isn't to indicate the most likely outcome. Having said that, as we can't predict next Thursday's weather, the notion that we can predict a temperature 200-300 years out is daft. To then go on and say what effect this will have on the the climate (all bad according to the IPCC) is certifiable.
geronimo
"I now have no idea what Cameron is trying to achieve?" Dung.
What make you think he knows? Most warmists seem to have an amazing ability to want multiple incompatible things at once. CAGW action is the ultimate underpants gnome plan. Low energy prices, a booming economy, hugely expensive and unreliable energy sources, plummeting CO2, and adoring public behind them 100%.
I don't think we should ever underestimate how little politicians know about AGW.
TinyCO2
Martin, your assertions are just not true, and obviously so.
there is no actual evidence that far future climate can be predicted any better than the stock market.Bull. Stocks prices in 10 or 100 years is essentially unconstrained except for not being negative. They are governed by many factors that have no physical basis. They resemble the weather more than climate. Climate is governed by energy. Adding energy by increasing CO2 levels warms it. But it is also highly constrained. Global temperature will be within 2 or 3% of current K values in 100 years: so within +/-10K of today's value. Ignoring the -ve range which only the truly stupid will favour, that means temperature will be between 0 and 10K greater in 100 years.
saying "we just don't know" is very far from agreeing that some specific outcome should be taken seriously when the system in question (...) is incapable of being predicted
It is remarkable that someone with an engineering background and an understanding of physics should be unable to say whether warming is more likely to be in the bottom, middle or top of the 0..10K range. That should not comfort anyone. On the contrary it says that you have no confidence that temperatures will not rise by many degrees.
Raff
Ignoring the -ve range which only the truly stupid will favour…I wonder what the excuses will be should the global temperature trend be negative? Having seen the incredible squirming about the nil-trend, it would certainly be fun to find out!
Radical Rodent
Raff
I have never read a post by any person (on any blog on any subject) that so aptly demonstrated the perfect vacuum between their ears.
Dung
Raff, you make out like we're the odd ones in the climate debate. In the latest survey of what Americans would spend to prevent global warming, 91% would be unwilling to spend more than $300 and only 65% would spend up to $100. Jesus, even I would spend more than $300 if I thought it would even scratch the surface. Hell I already do. However I know it's not hundreds we each need to spend, it's thousands.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/are_voters_willing_to_pay_to_combat_global_warming
So you can sit around here sneering and spouting unconvincing dogma or you can lobby your own side for argumnts that can extract more than a measily $100 a head from a nation of people who emit twice the CO2 we do.
TinyCO2
Was Raff'slast post comprehensible to anyone else? Or is it just me? You will note that he switched from C to K, so the world's average temperature (15Cish) in K becomes 288K giving an average temperature increase of between 2% and 3% of 5.88K (or C) and 8.64K (or C). Where did the +/-10K come from? And why use K at all to estimate the temperature? it doesn't appear on any temperature world temperature dataset as far as I know.
Did he use K because he said it was "highly constrained" and using C would have had the temperature increases between 38% and 58% which wouldn't look "highly constrained", or in his "rabbit out of the hat" figure of +/-10K which in degrees C would be +/-66%. Or is there some law of thermodynamics that uses K instead of C to define energy retention in a closed system?
Anyway Raff is making a massive assumption in believing that only two variable matter in a coupled non-linear chaotic system. Nobody knows what effects rising temperature will have on the system, although for sure, historically it appears to have been remarkably stable. What will happen when the evaporation concomitant with the warming puts more water vapour into the air? According to George Monbiot's Guardian headline "This is what Global Warming looks like" we will have very snowy winters, we will almost certainly have more rain, both more snow and more rain imply more clouds> But how much more? I don't think anyone can answer that question, just that there will be more. But clouds account for 30% of the energy returned to space so a minor increase in clouds of say 1% would cause the energy imbalance to go negative by 0.4W/m^2 (Otto et al 2012 I believe found a net increase of 0.6W/m^2/annum). This could, of course be offset by the increased water vapour causing more feedback, but you get my point. It's not just two variables that we're dealing with and to do so is highly likely to result in wrong assumptions and false forecasts.
Has nobody in the warmist community taken anything from Malthus' using population and food production to come up with false forecasts because he not only didn't take into account the confounding variables he didn't even know they existed!
The Earth doesn't know that there's a special sort of warming cause by humans emitting CO2 it just detects warming and responds accordingly. There are at least three warm periods we can look at all warmer than today and two of them, the Minoan and Roman warmer by 4C and 2C respectively with the MWP at around 1C. All are in what we might call "recorded" history so where are the +10K increases in temperature caused by these warm periods? Where are the tales of famine, pestilence, death and war stalking the Earth as a result of the warming?
geronimo
Geronimo:
There are at least three warm periods we can look at all warmer than today and two of them, the Minoan and Roman warmer by 4C and 2C respectively with the MWP at around 1C.Where do you get this information, that you assert with such confidence? Please provide at least 3 completely unconnected sources.
Radical Rodent
The last info I looked up showed Minoan maximum at 2 deg C warmer than today and the maximum in the previous inter glacial was 2 deg warmer than the Minoan. Will go find the reference if dragged kicking and screaming ^.^
Dung
RR, it is probably taken from the GISP2 Greenland ice core temps which, I am given to believe, correlate quite well with European temperature swings. Of course alarmists pick and choose when to consider Greenland as being unrepresentative of Europe or then claiming Antarctica represents the whole world. There are always arguments that can be made in favour and against.
michael hart
Martin A: saying "we just don't know" is very far from agreeing that some specific outcome should be taken seriously when the system in question (...) is incapable of being predicted
Raff: It is remarkable that someone with an engineering background and an understanding of physics should be unable to say whether warming is more likely to be in the bottom, middle or top of the 0..10K range.
Raff, as they say, which part of "we just don't know" is confusing you? "We just don't know" means that we just don't know. It does not mean we think the mean global surface temperature at some particular future time will be in one of three subdivisions of the range from 0K to 10K above today's value. It means we don't know anything about it relative to today's value, including the sign of the difference.
Martin A: there is no actual evidence that far future climate can be predicted any better than the stock market.Raff: Bull.
Raff, would you like to come up with some evidence - any evidence - that we are currently capable of predicting the climate in 100 years from now in any meaningful way.
Note: Evidence, please, not a restatement of your beliefs.
Martin A
Martin A: you might as well join Geronimo, knitting fog. As an aside, I have heard that there is a person in New Zealand with exactly the same name as you. I wonder what colour his eyes are? Other than “we just don’t know”, perhaps Raff could tell us.
Radical Rodent
Michael hart
The problem with GISP2 is that it is very noisy. Compare it with the Vostok core in Figure 7 here and you will see the number of noise spikes is much greater for GISP2.
One of these spikes is often claimed to be the Minoan Warm period. Nobody doing so seems worried that other cores show nothing..
Entropic man
EM, you will note that I had already added a caveat.
The Vostok core in Antarctica is, of course, somewhat further further away from Europe than Greenland and would not be expected to show as much noise because it is, errr, up in the middle of the Antarctic ice cap, well removed from significant local influences.
michael hart
Geronimo, you are nitpicking. Temperature is related to energy and the K scale is proportional to energy. The C scale is clearly not unless you think negative energy has any meaning. Whether we talk about 10K or 8.6K is irrelevant.
Martin, the evidence you seek is called physics. The stock market has no equivalent. Your pretense is that because our knowledge of earth systems is imperfect, we actually know nothing. I dare say that this reduces the cognitive dissonance you experience, as it allows you to pretend we can make no useful judgement of the effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere. And that confirms you preference for business as usual.
Raff
Raff
You are digging a bigger and bigger hole for yourself, It is hard to see which subject you know least about, they all seem to be tied on Zilch.
Dung
Geronimo, you are nitpicking.Why are pots and kettles coming to mind?
…unless you think negative energy has any meaning.And why not? As energy can be neither be created nor destroyed, its only relevance to us is its transmission between different levels, whereby one body gains energy, and another body loses it. While the energy gained by a body can be considered positive, what could the energy lost by a body be referred to, if not negative?
Your pretense [sic] is that because our knowledge of earth systems is imperfect, we actually know nothing.Erm, no. Admitting that you do not know something is NOT the same as saying that you know nothing. What Martin is saying is that, because we know a little about something, this does not mean that we know everything about it. What colour are the eyes of Martin’s namesake in New Zealand?
…we can make no useful judgement of the effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere.A correct statement – we cannot make any useful judgement of the effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere. We can make suppositions, and then compare them against reality; what we cannot do is to make suppositions and, when comparisons with reality do not match the suppositions, declare reality to be wrong, and make adjustments.
Radical Rodent
Martin, the evidence you seek is called physics.
Raff, naming a field of knowledge is not giving evidence that we can predict things that will happen in the future to a system that, at best is partially understood, whose initial conditions are unknown, and is known to be chaotic*.
Defending Counsel: Officer, what evidence do you have that my client was in any way involved in the crime?Detective: Sir, the evidence you seek is called forensic science.
Defending Counsel: No further questions my lord.
Judge: Case dismissed.
*chaotic systems are incapable of having their long term future behaviour computed, even if they conform entirely to known laws and their initial conditions are known to high precision.
Martin A
If climate is so chaotic and as unpredictable as the stock market, how can I say with certainty that July will be warmer than January in London this year, next year and in 100 years?
Raff
"We are wasting our time; all of it."
Niet, time can never be wasted, not possible. However modern day man appears to have an ability to make it as inefficient process as is possible