Well, you’ve made it abundantly clear that the only actions you consider reasonable are ones that don’t involve significant uncertainty. This is why the only strategies you endorse are (a) working to improve disaster recovery methods and (b) working to improve climate science models—because there’s no uncertainty about their usefulness, no matter how global climate change turns out.
Any time anybody suggests pursuing any policy that does involve significant uncertainty, you respond “But we don’t know with sufficient certainty whether the effects of the policy will justify its costs!” And as far as you’re concerned, that settles the question.
Unfortunately, what we’re stuck in at present is a situation which has not only high uncertainty but also potentially extremely high risks (like the “householder facing a possibly armed intruder” scenario that I mentioned above). If the risks are real, then waiting until we have certainty about the amounts of the risks and costs could make the problem drastically worse—possibly far worse than we could realistically expect to cope with just by increased spending on disaster recovery.
So the central question about policy on anthropogenic climate change is this: Which is more important, the magnitude of the risk or the uncertainty of the risk?
The majority of climate scientists, as well as increasing numbers of policymakers and citizens, have opted for the position that the magnitude of the risk outweighs its uncertainty. According to this position, we are justified in treating anthropogenic climate change as real and taking steps to reduce or reverse it by limiting carbon emissions, even if there are still high levels of uncertainty about the success of those steps, because the potential dangers of unchecked climate change are so great.
The position you’ve chosen is exactly the opposite. You feel that the uncertainty of the risk is much more important than its magnitude. No matter how bad the potential consequences of climate change may be, or how much agreement there is among mainstream climate scientists about the overall likelihood of bad consequences, you will not endorse any action that you feel involves significant uncertainty.
You’re perfectly within your rights to choose that stance, but it makes it pointless to debate specifics of climate policy with you. There’s no climate-change mitigation policy that anyone could suggest at present that could meet with your approval, because there’s still so much uncertainty in the science and economics involved in these issues.
Which leaves me with nothing much to discuss regarding action versus inaction. I’m very willing to act if there is a reasonable action, but I haven’t heard of one yet.
jshore, please feel free to chime in on this question, as I have not heard your plan, cost estimate, projected benefits, or delay cost either.
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What I would say most simply is that I support a policy to put a reasonable cost on the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmopshere. In fact, I don’t see how anybody who accepts the basic science and believes in market economics can oppose this. We know that the cost of emitting these gases into the atmosphere is certainly not zero…and that is how it is currently being valued and that is leading us to make extremely wasteful and destructive choices.
Whether that cost is imposed directly with a carbon tax or indirectly through a cap-and-trade system, I don’t much care. However, I do think it should be done in a way that is flexible in allowing companies to reduce emissions in the most cost-effective ways. While I think some government investment in alternative energy and conservation is also good, I don’t think it is a substitute for correcting an obvious market failure. I also don’t think the government is likely to be that good at choosing the best technology…I am afraid we will end up instead with the technology that gets the most votes from constituents (like ethanol from corn).
As for costs and benefits, I will freely admit that the combination of uncertainties in the science and uncertainties in the economics makes it difficult to ascertain these numbers with very much accuracy. However, fortunately, it doesn’t seem like we really have to as this paper that I linked to above demonstrates that with a few basic assumptions, one finds that it is a very wise choice to impose a carbon tax that gradually increases over time as a hedge against an uncertain future…and that it is quite foolish to do nothing. This is particularly true since I don’t think the economics models accurately include the sort of fate that we are consigning ourselves to if we seriously degrade ecosystems enough to cause mass extinctions.
I also like this paper which points out what can be done with a combination of various technologies because I think it will take such a combined approach…There are no silver bullets.
The rules are not different for scientists who work in industry versus those who work in academia. In both cases, intellectual property is still protected. Applied Physics Letters didn’t treat me any differently because I had an industry affiliation as they would have had I had an academic affiliation.
It is true that a business has the incentive of commercial value that is not generally there in academia (although more in more professors are in fact patenting their work and starting business ventures…a side fact that isn’t really relevant here). However, as an academic, it is still important to protect one’s intellectual property. Academics live and die by their publication record and if you spend lots of time writing a code and then turn it over to someone else to use as they see fit, that puts you at a disadvantage relative to that person who has gotten the fruits of your labors for free.
And, as I noted, others did “replicate” Mann’s work by the standards by which that term is used in the physical sciences, which does not necessarily mean down to every mathematical wiggle. It means getting the same physical result.
I gave you plenty of examples. Lots and lots of stuff published in the physical sciences is essentially just mathematics. (In fact, some of it doesn’t even start from any real physical data as Mann did.) And, papers that perform these manipulations almost never describe it in enough detail to allow one to reproduce the exact same mathematical manipulations. As I told you before, when I referee papers, I often demand that they clarify their method but I have never demanded it to the point where I would be able to replicate their results down to the last decimal place mathematically…And, judging by other papers that I see published, I am more of a stickler than most referees.
If you want examples, just go a thumb through a copy of Applied Physics Letters, Physical Review Letters, or Physical Review E and look at practically any theory paper (or paper that has some theory in it).
I mean, I suppose that one can raise legitimate questions about whether this is the best way to conduct science and so forth…sort of like the open-source people are doing in the computer software field. But, to try to claim that science is conducted in a different way based on Gods-knows-what idea you have in your head is just counterfactual.
jshore, thanks for your always interesting replies. You say:
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, jshore. I sent you a list of about 20 aspects or so of Mann’s work that were not replicated in the study most often cited as a replication. If you tolerate that kind of sloppiness, there’s not a whole lot I can say to change your mind.
However, to cite this as an example of how I don’t understand science is simply not true. It is merely an example of the laxity of your own personal standards.
Oh, I see, it’s not complicated at all, we’re not trying to understand one of the most complex systems that we have ever tried to model, it’s just “basic science” … now why didn’t I notice that?
As I have pointed out many times, there is no agreement on what you choose to call the “basic science”, and all of your attempt to establish it by endless repetition doesn’t make it so. There are a number of very smart, very well trained PhD climatologists at top Universities out there who say that the basics of climate science are very poorly understood. If it’s so “basic”, why do you think there are still so many unknowns and so much disagreement? Forcings such as cosmic rays, biogenic methane production, and plankton DMS have just been discovered … perhaps you could explain whether you accept the “basic science” of these forcings, and if so, just what that “basic science” is.
I pointed out before that “basic science” has said for years that decreasing snow and ice albedo will warm the Arctic, it’s such basic science that it’s built into all the climate models … but in fact, observations show that hasn’t been the case, because it is counteracted by a change in cloudiness.
Whenever somebody says “basic science” and “climate” in the same sentence, I know that they don’t understand the question. The question of the climate and its future vagaries requires extremely complex science, much of which we don’t have a clue about. Did you, or the climate models, or anyone else, predict that interaction of ice and clouds using your much-vaunted “basic science”? … Pretending that we can understand what the climate will do using “basic science” is a trap for fools.
And that is the underlying uncertainty problem. It’s not uncertainty about future costs of emission controls that it the underlying problem, or uncertainty about the future rise in CO2, it’s the uncertainty about the science.
And we know the cost is non-zero exactly how? As the lawyers would say, “Assuming facts not in evidence” … For example, according to the IPCC the earth warmed some 0.6°C since 1900, and CO2 forcing has risen by about 45%. Perhaps you could point out to me the costs of either the warming or the CO2 rise, and exactly where it was imposed.
See, unlike you, I take facts and observations over theory any time. We have a wonderful period of observation over the last century during which the temperature and the CO2 have risen … but where are these costs of the CO2 and the warming you are so confident about? Surely if you are so confident, despite the fact we can’t exactly say what the future costs might be, you can point out the past costs due to CO2 and rising temperatures …
Now the inefficiency of goverment at choosing the best technology, that I can agree with you about completely.
“With a few basic assumptions”? jshore, with a few basic assumptions I can prove anything you want me to prove … but are the “basic assumptions” correct? Having looked at the paper, I’d say “No”. Their “basic assumption” is that the climate change from a doubling of CO2 should be analyzed in a range from 1° to 9°, which fits well with the models … but not with the observations.
In addition, it is obvious that for many norther countries warming will be a benefit … but somehow that got left out of their “basic assumptions”, along with the increase in crop production due to CO2 fertilization …
I fear the paper didn’t impress me at all. In such a paper, one should be very clear about the scientific underpinnings of the “basic assumptions”, and they made no attempt to do so.
Perhaps for these reasons, Google Scholar finds exactly zero citations of the paper by other scientists in the 2-1/2 years since its publication …
Unfortunately, that paper neglects the costs, either direct or indirect, of the “solutions”, which makes it worse than useless. What good is a solution that costs more than the problem it is designed to solve?
Overall, your insistence that you both understand the problem and know the solution reminds me altogether too much of the folks who came up with the brilliant plan to solve the cane beetle problem in Australia by natural, organic means … after all, what could be wrong with natural and organic?
jshore, I must have I missed the post where you gave me “plenty of examples” of people accepting “kinda close” as the scientific standard when it comes to replicating a study involving nothing but mathematics.
Perhaps you could re-post the original post, or cite it, so that I can examine and comment on the examples.
Are you referring to the link to the Mormon magazine op-ed piece by the novelist Orson Scott Card that I commented on above?
Because if so, as I said, I really don’t think that counts as a serious scientific critique of Mann’s research. I’ve got nothing against Meridian magazine or Orson Scott Card that I know of, but you simply can’t expect people to take popular op-ed articles by nonscientists seriously as a reliable authority on proper standards of scientific practice.
I think your sarcasm is a little unjust to jshore here. Nobody knows better than you that he’s quite well aware of the complexities and uncertainties of climate science, and is constantly wading through highly specialized research publications in the field in order to explain the issues to the rest of us. If anybody is trying to pull a snow job on the issue of climate science and our current understanding of it, it’s not jshore.
Anyway, I just popped in to note that I will regretfully have to drop out of the thread for a while due to travel over the next few days, so it’s not that I’m ignoring it or lost interest. Have fun, all!
Of course not, you must know I’m not so foolish as to confuse a list of unreplicated items with a popular article. And I described that piece by Orson Scott Card as an explanation for the layman.
However, while it is not a “serious scientific critique”, it is a clear report of a serious scientific critique of Mann’s work. And I note that neither you, nor jshore, nor anyone else has refuted one single point that Card made … it’s a simple, popular piece, but it very accurately describes what happened.
Until you guys can dispute any of Card’s statements , can I assume that we are in agreement on them? Because you see, they’re all true. I strongly encourage you to consider the implications of the facts that Card has laid out, and what Mann’s actions (and your subsequent defense of his actions) means about climate science.
I’m perfectly serious about this, guys. Mann is a lowlife who cheated his way into prominence, and you are just nodding your heads and saying oh, that’s fine, that’s the scientific standard, how can you be so mean to Mann, close is good enough … either put up, by showing where Card is wrong, or stand up, and be counted on the side of honest scientific integrity.
I do know that he is aware of the complexities, which is why I was shocked to when he said:
He says that the issue is so clear that anyone who even looks at the basics has to come to the same conclusion … while I’m sure that jshore is aware of the complexities, he is totally ignoring them in that statement. He is saying that the issue is not complex, that it is so basic that there should be no dissent, that anyone with half a brain and some simple skills and knowledge will inevitably come to the same conclusion that jshore came to, because it’s just bozo simple. How could there be any dispute, it’s basic science?
Now, that may not be what he meant … but it is certainly what he said. And unfortunately, it was all too typical of the AGW supporters’ desire to make a very complex issue into a sound bite, and then say something like “This is so simple that I don’t see how anyone can disagree”.
Perhaps you are correct that the satire was unwarranted, but I am sick and tired of being told that any dispute is childish, that the science is well understood, that the debate is over, that any reasonable person should be on the side of the angels (which just happens to be the AGW side), that the required actions are obvious … kimstu, as you and jshore both know, this is not grade school stuff, this is not “basic science”, this is a very, very complex question. The actions are not obvious, heck, it’s worse than that, even the right questions to ask are not obvious. It is an area of science that we know very little about, and pretending that it is not is a cheap debating tactic that jshore should be ashamed of, and you should be ashamed to be defending.
Have fun yourself, and many thanks for your contributions to the discussion. Although I often disagree with your ideas, I have no questions about your motives, which are the same as mine - an abiding care and love for our marvelous planet and the beings therein.
Look, I don’t really feel like it is a productive use of my time to investigate exactly what all of Card’s deceptions and misstatements are in that article. The whole article is really lame and might even be libelous (against both Mann and Santer) in a country like Britain that has a lower threshhold for suing for libel. But, let’s face it, if this view of what happened was shared by, say, the members of the National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the issue of temperature reconstructions, do you think they would have said what they said? The ClimateAuditors gang are going further and further into creating their own alternate-reality world with things like this. (Hell, in the end, even the most rabid Republicans on the committee that called Mann before it backed off on their accusations and insinuating language.)
intention, I think you are being a little oversensitive here. Your entire rant is based on one word that I used, “basic”. Maybe it was not the most carefully chosen word. What I was trying to say is that if someone agrees with the science as presented by the IPCC, the statement by the joint academies, the statement by AAAS, etc., etc. then one concludes that there is (at least with very high probability) a non-zero price associated with greenhouse gas emissions and thus one would conclude that this should be reflected in the market.
I did not mean to imply that the science itself was “basic” in the sense of not complex. I was using the term “basic” in an imprecise sense to stand in for the scientific conclusions presented, e.g., by the IPCC in their review of the science. Again, it probably wasn’t the best word choice but it was a lot shorter than trying to write out what I meant.
Obviously, I am not going to convince someone who does not believe that there is likely any cost associated with the emission of greenhouse gases that we should put a pricetag on them, but over time that seems to be a smaller and smaller minority of people.
In addition, here’s an article from my local paper that lays out the issues well, with a number of citations (including the one posted above) to a variety of resources on the subject.
I would have to go back and find the thread again. However, what I focused on is not the actual replication study (because, to be honest, you don’t see that many studies trying to directly replicate another scientist’s results…it is usually not publishable unless replication fails or they do it as just a first step to going on and taking things considerably further). What I focussed on, rather, was the question of whether the general scientific standard for papers in the physical sciences is that they describe the algorithms used to the level of detail that would be necessary to precisely replicate the results in the very strict mathematical sense that you are speaking of. I have noted above that all you need to do is browse through any physics journal to see that in fact this is not the case.
In the previous thread, I gave you examples such as studies that used Monte Carlo methods or studies that used some unspecified interpolation algorithm on any data. As I recall, you dismissed these examples because, e.g., Mann’s calculation does not involve any Monte Carlo methods, which is rather missing the forest through the trees. I just pointed out some quick examples that I thought of where I could explain pretty quickly why there wouldn’t be enough data to replicate in the precise mathematical sense unless the authors included gory details that I have essentially never seen in such papers (but ones that are in a technical sense just a sequence of mathematical operations so that one could theoretically replicate them in the strict mathematical sense if one were really to be given all the gory detail such as the code for the random number generator and the seed used and exactly how it was called to perform the calculation, etc. etc.).
If you are only going to allow as examples studies that are precisely in every way like Mann’s study, you will be left with a subset of one.
Not to take sides in this debate, but I’m wondering about this conclusion. The last IPCC report said, if I recall correctly, that ‘modest’ warming of 2.5 degrees C or lower might actually have a net world economic benefit, while warming above that number would have a net economic cost. Does the new report still say that? If so, then claiming that there is an economic cost associated with global warming is an unproven assertion.
That’s not to say there won’t be damages. I don’t think there’s any amount of warming that wouldn’t result in damages to Africa and other poor countries near the equator. But that damage is offset by benefits in the north in the form of longer growing seasons, lower heating costs, and more arable land (retreat of permafrost, etc). If the benefits in the north outweigh the costs in the south, you could ‘solve’ global warming by simply giving economic aid to the hardest-hit countries, with the money coming from the increase in wealth due to the cost savings mentioned above.
As I mentioned before regarding the Stern Report, using his own model but adding a realistic social discount rate actually results in a ‘do nothing’ best approach, and his own model seems biased in the first place, using the high range numbers of cost of AGW damage and low range numbers for the cost of doing something about it. His figure of 1% of global GDP to maintain CO2 at 550 ppm isn’t accepted by any other study I could find. Most others use numbers in the 2-5% range (including the UN’s study, which is being treated here as definitive). His number for the cost of global warming seems to be near the top of the range of estimates I’ve seen. And even so, the decision is very close.
So while I agree with you that warming is happening, and humans are contributing to it, I think it’s a big, big leap from that statement and endorsing actions that could cost us 2-5% of GDP every year, indefinitely.
I have discussed before the glaring lack of any Verification and Validation (V&V) of global climate models (GCMs). It has been said that the agreement between various GCMs, along with comparisons that show that they are using similar code, obviates the necessity for a proper formal V&V, because it shows that they must be on the right track.
Here is an article from the Sandia National Laboratories on the question of V&V and code comparison. I post it here for a couple of reasons.
One is to show that V&V, far from being some esoteric and infrequent practice, is in fact a standard tool which is applied to all mission critical software.
They would? I guess I need to return all of the money I made coding credit risk management, revenue forecasting, smart inventory, and viewer preference prediction software. After all, those require knowledge of computers and modeling, and yet I don’t dismiss predictive climate models out of hand. Does anyone have some spare change for my mortgage payment? Once my clients find out I don’t know anything about computers and modeling, I’m screwed.
If I were you, I’d be seriously wary of attempting to use computer knowledge to separate yourself from others on this board. This place is teeming with gurus from most areas of computing.
jshore, good to hear from you. I find that your claim that you posted “plenty of examples” combined with your unwillingness to find the actual post to be curious … I don’t recall any such post.
Also, our definition of “example” seems to be different. To me, an “example” is an actual study showing what you claim. To you, it seems to be a vague statement that “Monte Carlo studies don’t work that way”.
You are quite correct that often the “gory details” are not included in the original paper. However, scientific validity is not determined by whether a study gets published. Many studies have been published which are later found to be in error, or even totally fabricated.
Scientific validity is determined by whether a given result can be replicated. If it can, it stands, and if it cannot, it falls. Scientific studies are replicated all the time, so I don’t understand your last sentence about how I will be “left with a subset of one”. You seem to be confusing replication with a study that supports the original result. Replication means doing the same experiment Mann did, and getting the same result.
You had made the claim that Mann’s work had been replicated by several other people, and I disputed that. You said that they got answers similar to Mann’s and I said that was not replication.
You keep defending the scientist’s right to conceal his code. But in Mann’s case, his refusal to reveal the code was critical, because there was a mathematical error in the code. This was only discovered because Mann had left some of the code on a public server, and it was found and examined.
Once it was examined, the error was revealed, and only then were Mann’s results able to be even roughly duplicated. And that’s why it is critical for someone making an extraordinary claim such as Mann’s to reveal exactly how they reached their conclusion. Mann’s claim was in contradiction to years of accumulated evidence, from proxies, historical records, and anecdotal accounts, that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm or warmer than today.
Mann’s Hockeystick claimed that this was not the case. But because he hid his data and methods, his study could not be subjected to the ordinary scientific scrutiny. And Mann, in his position as a lead author for the IPCC, pushed it to the forefront of the debate, where it soon became an icon of the AGW movement. Despite having been shown to be in error, it is still being used around the world to “prove” that this is the warmest time in recent history. This reflects very poorly on both Mann and the IPCC process, which is supposed to report on what is actually known, and not to rely on recently published, untested claims.
While it is true that some subsequent studies have come to a conclusion similar to Mann’s, they have all suffered from the same flaws as the Hockeystick study - cherry picking of the proxies to give the desired result, and inclusion of undependable proxies. If you want to do a proxy study, you can’t just pick and choose the proxies you want to use. You need to set up rules in advance which state what proxies will be used, and then your study needs to use all of the proxies that fit the criteria.
In addition, you need to exclude proxies which give incorrect results. According to the NAS Report, along with other studies (e.g. Biondi et al., the Wegman Report, Graybill and Idso), the bristlecone or “stripbark” trees in particular need to be excluded, as they are known to give bad results.
For example, Biondi et al. (including Hockeystick co-author Hughes) said:
Since all proxy studies require “calibration” to the 150 years or so of recent historical record, and since the stripbarks are “not a reliable temperature proxy for the last 150 years”, they should be excluded from all temperature proxy studies, as the NAS Report recommended … care to guess what effect they have on the historical reconstruction if they are included? Why yes, they make the blade of the “Hockeystick”, which is why, despite Biondi and Graybill and Idso and the NAS recommendations not to use them, they have been used by subsequent authors desperate to show that this is the warmest time in recent history.
If you can point me to any historical temperature studies which use a priori proxy selection rules, which exclude stripbark prosies, and which also support Mann’s conclusion that there was no MWP, please point them out to me. I have never seen one. Yes, you can get a result similar to Mann’s, if you repeat Mann’s transgressions … but that doesn’t mean anything.
And if you can’t find any such studies … don’t you think you might want to reconsider your position?
I agree with you in general. There are plenty of valid uses for computer modeling, and there are plenty of good, predictive computer models.
The problem with modeling is that it’s no better than your assumptions and your data. If we don’t know what processes are at play long-term that affect global temperature (and we have at best a mediocre understanding), then any model we create is going to be incomplete. Modeling also gets much tougher as you add more axes of freedom and more complicated, interrelated rules. So while it’s not hard to model the future location of a rocket based on known past data, it’s impossible to model the price of a stock in any meaningful predictive way. Climate models are more like the latter than the former.
Also, you need to be able to test your model. As I understand it, current predictive models don’t work with older data to predict current temperature. Given the enormous complexity of a climate model, the inability to test them against past data to verify their assumptions makes me pretty worried. There is considerable uncertainty that is not given the proper emphasis when discussing what we believe is going to happen in the future.
We’re still learning plenty about long-term feedback mechanisms such as methane sinks and algae blooms and how they affect climate. We’re still not sure of the temperature record. We need more study and we need to collect more good data. Not to prove that AGW is happening, but to start to get some better predictions of possible outcomes so that we can make smarter choices.
One of the big problems with this debate is that it’s highly ideological. Environmentalists don’t WANT an answer that says we’re better off doing nothing. They have other reasons to prefer that we rein in carbon emissions. Most scientists fall into that ideological camp, and therefore they are operating with bias - and if their peers have the same bias, so will the reviews. Not intentionally, but bias is always there. That’s why we try to study double-blind when possible. So when you have a community that has an ideological bias towards one conclusion, you should be extra vigilent to make sure that you have your facts straight and the conclusions are warranted. Instead, skeptics are increasingly ignored or dismissed.
Assuming AGW is happening, I want to make smart decisions about it - not necessarily the same pre-conceived ‘fixes’ we always get from the environmental movement - cut back, conserve, increase the size of government, less is always better, use the precautionary principle.
It may be that the ‘correct’ answer to AGW is to simply begin funding research into mitigation and preparing economic funding for countries damaged by warming. It may turn out to be a more cost-effective way to deal with the problem than to attempt to reduce carbon output.
The Stern Report had the right idea - we need more studies like that. Just better ones. We need to project the range of costs of both damage and CO2 avoidance, and compare them. We need some real error bars around the conclusions. If the error is to great to give us an acceptable answer, study some more and collect more data. For instance, if the data says, “Well, warming might be low enough that it will actually be a net economic benefit, and it might be high enough to be a net economic drain”, then that’s not much help at all in making economic choices. And that’s just about where we’re at right now. The error bars are so big that we can’t base rational responses on them. Not in a huge scale. We can do what we’re doing - start looking at plucking low-hanging fruit, funding more studies, increase research in areas that may lead to cleaner power or cheaper sequestration.
Maybe we’re pricing our risk correctly today. As we learn more, the price might go up, or it might go down. We’ll know when we learn it.
