Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.(From The Cocktail Party, T.S. Eliot)
In June, I participated in an episode of Insight on SBS. The theme was “Climate Sceptics”. The premise was that the audience would be comprised of people who were sceptical about climate change to a greater or lesser degree. On the stage, fielding questions from the sceptical audience, was Professor Stephen Schneider, a climate change scientist who participated in the IPCC report. (Very sadly, 3 weeks after filming, Professor Schneider passed away. My condolences to his family.)
The episode is finally screening on SBS on Tuesday 7 September at 7:30pm. I must confess that I’m a little scared. I think I would have been okay if they’d just aired it reasonably soon after filming, but the World Cup then the Federal Election interrupted screening.
Why would I be scared? When someone says the words “climate sceptic”, the instant stereotype which springs to most people’s minds is that of a right-wing Holocaust-denying lunatic who is immune to reason. And I assure you, I am none of those things. But once you “out” yourself as a sceptic, you get tarred with that brush. I worry that my colleagues, my friends and my students might judge me, because I didn’t really get to put my views across properly (in fact, I don’t speak until half way through, presuming they even put my bit in!). I don’t like the term “climate sceptic”, to be honest; I prefer to think of myself as a climate agnostic. I haven’t made up my mind yet.
The people in the audience included environmentalists, people who worked in sustainability and agriculture, scientists and a bunch of regular people who had no particular specialisation or expertise in the area, but were just worried.
It really annoys me that I should feel scared to express my opinion. I strongly believe that progressive people should be able to raise doubts without being accused of being tantamount to Holocaust deniers, without being ostracised by their neighbours, without having someone spit in their coffee and without feeling scared that they will be labeled as a fascist. I admit that some people who fall into the sceptic camp are a little scary, but not everyone is. Ultimately, I think that deriding people who raise doubts (1) shows a lack of understanding about scientific method and (2) serves to fuel scepticism rather than to allay it.
Elitism, scepticism and risk analysis
One of the participants in the Insight program made an interesting observation to me beforehand. He said, “I’ve noticed that scepticism tends to be class-based. Middle-class, university educated people are far more likely to accept that climate change is happening. Working-class people are far more likely to be sceptical and concerned.” There is a deep elitism at the heart of the writings of some who suggest the shape of the policy responding to climate change (eg, Clive Hamilton, George Monbiot). The sly inference is that working-class people are stupid bogans who don’t know any better, and that they should let their betters guide them in what is to be done.
Noel Pearson, one of my favourite Australian commentators, wrote an excellent piece in The Australian last year. He envisaged a box divided into four segments. The horizontal axis represented left-wing to right-wing. The vertical axis represented economic security, from economically secure at the top to economically insecure at the bottom. Now, as he notes, not all sceptics are right-wing. I would count myself as a rare leftish-wing sceptic, whereas SL is more right-wing than I, but not sceptical about climate change. Nonetheless, it’s a convenient generalisation. Pearson then says:
Most of Australia’s climate change action policy advocates come from the top left-hand box. They believe that climate change is real, is caused by humans, and that urgent and dramatic action must be taken to reduce carbon emissions. They are also economically secure. All of the media and the legions of educated people who believe in global warming fall within this quadrant.
Yes, there are also believers who are economically insecure but they are not the heartland of climate change activism. If they also dread climate change, their relative economic insecurity nevertheless affects the kinds of policy responses they may support or reject.
Pacific Islanders and other such people who are directly confronted by rising sea levels and believe in climate change causation comprise those in the bottom left quadrant who are economically insecure but believe in the need for action on climate change.
The top-right corner is occupied by the economically secure who don’t believe in (or even care about) climate change and resist action. Capitalists whose pursuit of self-interest has transmuted from natural calling to German social theorist Max Weber’s iron cage of an endlessly unfulfilling accumulation and consumption, and who are at least honest enough not to cloak their economic security under a mantle of moral worthiness like the wealthy Al Gore, occupy this corner. There is much scope for cynicism among this mob, but it is a toss-up as to what’s worse: climate policy activists who want others to pay costs of ameliorative action but who will ensure that any cost they themselves bear will not be a great burden, or those archetypal cigar-chompers who don’t give a damn. One is blatantly selfish, the other more subtly so.
I am on the upper side of the economic security axis. Though almost all my relatives and the people most dear to me are economically insecure, and though I intimately know and work with people in poverty, I must confess this: I have no idea what it would mean for electricity bills to go up by, say, $50 a month. I think I could easily afford such a rise. And if I were asked to pay this increase in return for saving the planet, then I would probably readily consent. In fact my altruistic sacrifice number is probably significantly higher than $50.
Like many educated, middle-class professionals who earn a good salary, I have lost a real understanding of what an increase in the cost of living such as this means for lower-income people. Growing up in an extremely low-income family does not guarantee this empathy.
There is a policy issue here: it is easy for people above the income security line to devise and advocate climate action policies that allocate costs that are affordable by us but that are a big deal for the percentage of society for whom $50 a month makes or breaks a family budget or for whom any greater scarcity of employment is a life disaster.
That is what I saw on the Insight program: ordinary people who would struggle mightily if energy prices were raised by $50 a month. And they were scared. On the one hand, you have this disastrous prediction of what will occur as a result of climate change. On the other hand, you have the certain prospect of having to pay more for fuel which will necessarily have a massive impact on your life. As one woman said, “If we do things about this, it will have a huge impact on the economy and our whole country, so I think it’s really important to know whether it’s really necessary or not.”
As Professor Schneider said, one’s reaction to the scenario depends in part on one’s risk analysis. He said that all a climate change scientist can say is that on the preponderance of evidence climate change is occurring. This is a proper scientific approach. One can never prove one’s hypothesis incontrovertibly. One can only say that on the evidence available, it appears that the hypothesis is confirmed. (Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to discuss this on the program, but one of the best ways of confirming a hypothesis is to attempt to disprove it.)
For a person who is economically secure, an extra $50 a month for fuel and added costs of various commodities isn’t going to be a tremendous burden. It might hurt a little, but it isn’t going to break the bank. Thus, it’s understandable that most people who are middle-class and educated want to take action on climate change — for them, the risk of possible environmental catastrophe is far greater than the risk of paying a bit more for every day items. However, for a person who is less economically secure, an extra $50 a month for fuel and added costs of commodities is going to be a tremendous burden. I’m not talking people on the poverty line here (who would probably be covered by government rebates). I’m talking about working people who are not really well off, but who are not poor enough to be helped by the government. I’m also thinking of people whose business is going to be badly affected by any change in the structure of our economy. For them it’s a balance between immediate incontrovertible financial pain versus speculative future pain. This is why it’s a “wedge” issue for parties like the Labor Party in Australia. They just can’t please everyone.
The politicisation of climate change
It’s natural that people should wish to question climate change science when it has a large impact on them, but somehow climate change science has become politicised. Generally, as Pearson notes, those on the right are sceptical, while those on the left are “believers”. (As I said above, I am a rare exception to that rule, although I met others on the Insight program – it’s nice to know I’m not alone!)
When an issue gets politicised like that I get very worried. I must confess that I don’t really understand why the Left has decided that it will swallow climate change policy whole (which is distinguishable from the question of science). I know that one of the ideas of climate change policy is the idea that we should consume less and be a less capitalist society (which clearly fits into many leftist ideas). But surely another concern of left-wing people should be the perpetuation of the class system and the deepening of the divide between rich and poor. To me, it seems that anyone who is left-wing or progressive should also be concerned about potential effects of some suggested climate change policies on less privileged members of society, and that they should be concerned about the possibility of an elitist society if we institute the suggestions of commentators such as Clive Hamilton or George Monbiot. If we implement any policy, I believe we have to be really careful that it doesn’t create a more unequal society.
One of the audience members of the Insight program said her worry was that climate change science is being used by some to stifle development in poor countries so that they are kept “carbon neutral”. It’s a form of elitism, perhaps even an environmental neo-colonialism – “We know what’s best for you poor brown people, you have to stay in mud huts because it is a carbon neutral way of existence.” It buys into the whole myth of the “Noble Savage“. That’s not a fault of climate change scientists, as Professor Schneider pointed out in response.
Some sceptics are concerned about the way in which science is being used to push various political barrows in ways that might disadvantage those who are less economically secure or vulnerable. That is a progressive concern.
Climate change detracting from other environmental issues
There is also a perception that, if you’re a sceptic, then you must not care about the environment. This is false in many cases. There was a feeling among many of the environmentally-minded people in the audience that the focus on carbon emissions as the primary environmental “issue” of our time took the focus off other equally important issues which were perhaps more immediate, such as deforestation. In addition, the panicked nature of the debate was leading people into making unconsidered decisions which may actually be bad for the environment as a whole. I’ve written before on some downsides of the push for bio-fuel. If people are cutting down rainforests to plant bio-fuels, then you really have to question how environmentally effective this is. Yes, the IPCC says that climate change may radically affect the Amazon, but we shouldn’t destroy the very thing we are attempting to save in our attempts to mitigate climate change.
I strongly believe that we should be environmentally responsible, and that we should research and begin to rely on efficient alternative fuel sources. But in the process of this, we should not to ruin our economy, and not to send people who are less economically secure into the wall. It’s all very well for the likes of Gore and Monbiot to say “we” have to stop using aeroplanes and cars. When they say “we”, they mean the hoi polloi, not the intellectual elite. Of course, they still use aeroplanes and cars. I’m sure Al Gore has far more air miles than 500 of me.
What would it take to get me to be less sceptical?
There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald a while back by Dr Simon Niemeyer, a political scientist who was seeking how to effectively communicate the message about climate change to the community. He said:
The solution is not to dazzle unbelievers with science, but to engage everybody in a mature debate that recognises uncertainty and the role of our values in determining our beliefs.
…
So the task now is to see if a more considered approach to debate is possible in the wider public sphere and to engage with people with different views rather than try to harangue them.
Certainly, having a scientist quote all these facts and figures didn’t change my position. I am a lay person, not a scientist. I can’t make any effective judgments about the science behind Professor Schneider’s figures and projections. I don’t have the scientific or the statistical capacity to judge the various accounts as to what is going to happen with our climate. I don’t know who is right or wrong about the ‘hockey stick graph‘. I accord all due respect to Professor Schneider for coming and talking to us, and respect him for treating us respectfully, but his facts and figures didn’t change my mind.
If I’m not a scientist, why am I a sceptic, then? Well, there are two reasons why I’m sceptical. First, I believe that a level of scepticism is essential to proper, rigorous scientific method, and thus people ought to maintain scepticism about any scientific hypotheses. Einstein himself said, ‘No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.’ A hypothesis is strengthened by the failure of ardent attempts to disprove it. And I don’t really see the kind of mentality in climate change which allows for someone to attempt to disprove them.
Further, the kinds of hypotheses involved in climate change science are not analogous to saying: “My hypothesis is that if I add iron to copper sulfate solution, the copper will precipitate out.” One can make an observation as to the correctness or otherwise of the latter hypothesis instantly, just by adding some iron filings to copper sulfate solution. By contrast, the climate change predictions reach years into the future, and it’s certainly true that the predictions have substantially changed since the first IPCC report. There’s an immense amount of argument out there about whether the predictions since the fourth IPCC report have been met or not — it’s not just a matter of observing the precipitate — and the results are heavily contested.
I do worry about the heavy reliance on modelling which underlies the various predictions, because with a very complex system, it’s very difficult to model accurately. What if the model is wrong, but we end up changing our whole society based on it? Much is made of the fact that the models can be used to explain what has already happened in the past, but my understanding is that this doesn’t establish that the model is necessarily accurate with regard to the future. Similar modelling is often used in share trading, but it is not always correct in predicting what will happen. Joe Cambria made the following observation about trading models in a guest post here a while back:
Trading models were basically useless as they were essentially trend following in various degrees. They made money when the trend was in full swing, but they gave all the money away when there was no trend. …
Why then are we relying on models to predict climate change and adjust our way of life as a result? Are they more accurate than financial models in figuring the impact of GHGs in climate for a period of 100 years? The IPCC has handed out confidence levels of 90% as a result of models suggesting global temps will rise around 2 degrees over the next 100 years.
This is one reason why I am an agnostic.
Secondly, I get really worried when people say you can’t question something and that the science is ‘settled’. Just because there’s a broad consensus about something doesn’t mean that it’s right: sometimes the 1% of scientists who put forward an unpopular hypothesis with which 99% of scientists disagree happen to be right. Think of Alfred Wegener, whose theory of continental drift was rejected by most scientists at the time. Or think of Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who were in a minority of those who believed peptic ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection, and who turned out to be right. If we didn’t allow people to question the status quo, we’d never make scientific progress.
In part, I worry that people who attempt to question the status quo with climate change won’t be published in refereed journals and won’t get grants for their research. I hate the way that it’s “Us” and “Them” on both sides of the debate.
Paradoxically, I’d be less sceptical about climate science if it were portrayed as less ‘certain’, and if I could be assured that people were able to question it more. I think there is a lack of civility on both sides of the whole debate which makes it difficult (and Professor Schneider certainly agreed with this).
In that regard, I saw that Sir Muir Russell’s investigation of the “Climategate” e-mails (a series of leaked e-mails between prominent climate scientists) has concluded that the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists concerned was not in doubt, but that there was a failure to display “the proper degree of openness”. Climate scientists complain about the conspiracy theorists in the sceptical camp, but unfortunately, a failure to be open breeds conspiracy theories. Look at the number of conspiracy theories about secret societies like the Masons.
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I emphatically do not believe that climate change is being used by the UN impose a communist world government via climate change treaties (cf, for example, prominent sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton). Nonetheless, the lack of willingness to allow questioning and the “siege mentality” evident in the Climategate e-mails worried me. As far as I can see, if you are confident about your results, you should allow them to be questioned. You provide people with information when they ask you nicely, you allow competing reports to be taken into account. If you don’t want to do that, it suggests that you’re hiding something…even if you’re not!
Why such passion on this issue?
I’ve thought long and hard why people get so dogmatic on this issue. In my experience, it tends to generate “threads of doom” on blogs like few other issues (apart from Israel/Palestine or abortion). I find fervid “believers” of either extreme a little scary. When I first got interested in this topic, I visited a few blogs run by “climate change sceptics” and “climate change believers” and I was really freaked out. Basically, they just shouted at each other in a way that was not conducive to dialogue. I was scared to even contribute to either side.
I think people get so aggressive about the position they’ve taken on climate change because they have a desire to be consistent. In Influence at page 57, Robert Cialdini says:
A study done by a pair of Canadian psychologists uncovered something fascinating about people at the racetrack: Just after placing a bet, they are much more confident of their horse’s chances of winning than they are immediately before laying down that bet. Of course, nothing about the horse’s chances actually shifts; it’s the same horse, on the same track, in the same field; but in the minds of those bettors, its prospects improve significantly once that ticket is purchased. Although a bit puzzling at first glance, the reason for the dramatic change has to do do with a common weapon of social influence. Like the other weapons of influence, this one lies deep within us, directing our actions with quiet power. It is, quite simply, our nearly obsessive desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done. Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.
Once people have bet on a particular horse, they become convinced that the horse will win (whether it be the “sceptic” horse or the “believer” horse). But the fact of the matter is that neither position is certain. I think that many people on both sides could do with standing back a little and taking it a bit less personally. (Update: It is this phenomenon that I am referencing with the T.S. Eliot quote at the start, and to me, the quote illustrates the problems of being too dogmatic whatever side one is on — one can cause unintended harm.)
Conclusion
There is a suggestion that after “Climategate”, members of the general public have become less trusting of the orthodoxy on climate change.
It may seem counter-intuitive that if you want to get people to trust your message, you have to allow people to try to shoot it down. Funnily enough, however, that’s the way the law works when parties present evidence. The witness gives an examination-in-chief, the opposing barrister attempts to shoot it down with a cross-examination, questioning that version of the facts at each juncture.
That should also be the way in which science works. Think of the famous Solvay conference, where Einstein challenged the hypotheses of Bohr. Einstein’s queries and thought experiments caused Bohr to refine his hypothesis and make it more accurate and subtle. Gradually, too, Einstein redefined his position in response to Bohr’s responses.
This is the kind of mentality which needs to be brought to the climate change debate: a mentality which allows civil debate, but which allows scientists to challenge the orthodox hypotheses. By the same token, we should not just angrily deny the hypotheses of climate change scientists — that is as bad as simply accepting them without question.
Further, ordinary people should not be criticised for being sceptical. If you are asking people to change the way in which they live fundamentally, in ways that could impact them greatly, you should not ask them to be unquestioning. There is a real arrogance on the part of the likes of Hamilton and Monbiot which makes me recoil from their agenda.
Update:
In discussions with SL, she has boiled down my position to the fact that I rate equality in society as more important than the environment. With characteristic insight, she’s pretty much hit the nail on the head. I think the environment is important, but I also want an egalitarian society where people are going to be treated equally. If, to battle climate change, we have to create a deeply unequal society, I’d prefer to try and mitigate the effects rather than to create an unequal society with a giant gulf between haves and have nots.
Update 2:
On LP, people are again mixing up SL and me. GRRR!
And what was I saying about the lack of civility in the debate on climate change? It started with Robert ending his piece:
I for one will continue to look more than a little askance at somebody who declares that they’re both a progressive and a cilmate skeptic.
I would NEVER look askance at someone for believing differently from me on climate change, whether they were certain it wasn’t occurring or whether they were certain it was.
Take a look at some of the comments:
- There’s always a certain brutishness and coarseness to climate sceptics or agnostics, I think. Can anyone name one such person – with evidence – who has ever otherwise shown the slightest sense of inter species empathy or identification that does not involve forms of selfish bodily self-gratification.
- the legaleagle article is disturbing in that it’s essentially poorly reasoned rubbishyet comes from someone who is no doubt educated and reasonably bright.
- Deniers have a right to be ignorant, and they have a right to be ignored. If being labeled a denier makes you feel angry, marginalised, ridiculed, disliked etc, then feel free to educate yourself.
- If they don’t accept that, then I often wonder what they accept, do they believe in electricity? Or gravity? What about radiation?
- LE is not championing the cause of equality at all, she’s just another member of the white, educated, middle class evoking the needs of the poor and disadvantaged, as a way of justifying her own ignorant stance. It’s no more noble that those she decries in her post, in fact her view is considerable less noble because “trying to mitigate the effects” [of climate change] as she prefers, will leave many more people, much more vulnerable to the whims of the ‘elites’.
- On the assumption that I’ll get no takers, I do find deniers more than intellectually lazy. They’re fraudsters willing to lie and present made up crap. I’m not sure why – various reasons including notoriety. And the victim card is pathetic, as well as intellectually lazy, but played so often by these peddlers of made up stuff. Creationists and Young Earthers play the same crud.
Basically the thread consists of lots of people slapping themselves on the back as to how they are not intellectually lazy or stupid, and bullying someone who has dared express an opinion that differs from their own. I expected better from LP, although Kim is trying her best to keep it civil.
They should all go read this post at wandering stars (via Cast-Iron Balcony).
Update 3:
A few other posts around the traps…mostly around the response to my post at LP.
Still Chaos: Another Little War in Ozblogistan.
Catallaxy: Climate Fascists.
Tim Blair: Solidarity Breached.
Hoyden’s: Ozblogistan spats: this time it’s climate change.
The Insight Episode is here. I just wish to say again that I was very appreciative of Professor Schneider’s courtesy and I’m glad I got a chance to tell him that. R.I.P.
Uncivil dialogue does not achieve anything. It doesn’t convince anyone and it just gets people’s backs up.
Update 4:
More debate at Deltoid.
287 Comments
Legal Eagle,
you are bending over backwards to try and be fair here and acting as if there were two equivalent sides. Lord Monckton and co are not in the same ballpark as Einstein, the debate is not between two sets of climate scientists with opposing viewpoints, but between the great majority of climate scientists and a bunch of industry funded deniers.
I would recommend visiting Sceptical Science to read up in detail on why global warming is being brought on by the release of CO2 by humans.
Personally, it would be great if AGW was wrong, I would be much happier if my two children were growing up in a world which hadn’t already committed to several degrees of rise, but any thorough examination of the evidence would indicate otherwise.
The unfortunate issue is that we are still stuck debating whether it’s going to happen as opposed to how we can adapt to and reduce climate change in the most effective and equitable manner globally
My point is not so much about the science itself as about the rhetoric, Martin. There’s no doubt that Monckton has some views which I personally regard as decidedly cranky, but if you just try to silence him and say that people shouldn’t listen to him at all, that gives credence to the conspiracy theorists on the denier side.
And no, I don’t see the two sides as equal. The majority of scientists accept the hypothesis that our climate is warming and that this is caused by CO2 emitted by humans. A minority of people (scientists and laypeople) do not. The point is whether people who are in the minority can be heard. I suspect that they are just marginalised as cranks as soon as they speak out and express the slightest doubt. Who knows, they may have a legitimate point which is missed because they are just written off. Then again they may not. I really don’t know. I just want the process to be a fair one where dissent can be heard in a civil manner.
Personally, while all that is being debated, I am all for looking at how we can mitigate the effects of rises in temperature, and researching alternative fuel sources. I’d far rather we put all our energies into that than debating the ETS, for example.
Hi there
First time visitor to your blog.
Thanks for putting your opinions eloquently. Much better to read than most of the mush that passes as analysis on climate change.
I am married to a biologist, and have wanted to read the IPCC report with her. She can dissect and interpret scientific language for me (I am not sscience-trained) like *that*. So my trust in her is pretty solid (she has proved herself many times to be an expert in science).
Now, CC isn’t her main topic she graduated on, but she had to read enough to be able to pass this or that exam at uni.
Her conclusion is wholeheartedly AGW is having a negative impact on our climate, but we will eventually find ways to help balance. That our species is very good at destroying and creating at the same time, that we will just adapt. Which I have to say, I feel is a likely result of this challenge.
I’d say it is akin to doing a dump in someones living room, then acting as if the smell has nothing to do with you.
From her interpretation, the more CO2 we shove into the system beyond homeostatis leads to a corrosive effect on the eco-system as a whole.
This, I find VERY hard to get around.
But I find that those who are sceptical are less willing to see us manage the effects we have had on the natural environment.
Almost like ….. most of us I guess, are taught at a young age, and reinforced in the schoolyard, that if we want to do something bad enough, we can find an excuse, rig the system, and get away with it. And most kids avoid/ ignore the ‘doing x brings y consequences”. Society reinforces this. Got money or power, just make sure you aren’t held responsible. To this, I;d say a cynical society is a result of this.
So it is very easy to escape consequences of cutting down rainforests, polluting the skies with industrial smoke, etc etc etc.
One of the main reasons I skip by any sceptical AGW writings in the papers is because I don’t actually trust the source of where they get their information from.
Having worked in the environmental movement, their source is usually their own research and time, looking through scientific reports, EIS statements, geological surveys. I’ve seen it in action in many groups over years.
If you know someone who can answer this question: “what responsibility will we as humans take over the trashing of our variuos environments in the west for over 200 years, and what is the result of that trashing that we are living with today?” (or something like that, don’t quote me) while saying AGW isn’t happening, or that the results are non-conclusive, and put this as a firm arguement, then I will be very happy to read it and see where it can fit into my own layman-research into this vast hypothesis.
Cheers
Eric
LE, I operate from the point of view that as unattractive as the climate change lobby is in its groupthink and will to suppress, the danger that climate change is real is something we have to deal with. The political wing of the movement shouldn’t be allowed to cloud the real risk.
Two other things: Martin proves your point and I don’t think “fervid” is a word
Fervid is a word! (Look here for proof.) I collect odd words.
Well, I stand corrected. Fervidly so. Will be adding it to my vocab!
Nick sums up my position with fair accuracy, although that said I do think the thoughtless anti-progress rhetoric and elitism of some in the environment movement needs to be ‘called out’ reasonably regularly. This is not because I think all elitism is bad (just because poor or marginalized people want a given x does not mean that x has any merit at all), but in the interests of fair labelling. I am even less impressed with anti-progress rhetoric: I have a professional interest in what life was like for poor people before the tremendous wealth generation of modern industrial societies. Shitty doesn’t even begin to describe it.
I’m a sceptic on climate change and I have been so for quite a while there are several questions here that make the assertions about AGW rather moot.
In the first instance there is the problem of Paleo-climate reconstructions (via proxies) their accuracy is err rather questionable at best and the rely a great deal upon fancy statistical analysis which is very much determined by the assumption put into them for the result that comes out. Essentially we just can not know what the planetary temperature or its atmospheric composition was with anywhere near enough accuracy over the vast spans of time that life has existed on the Planet to be to be conclusive about the relationship between CO2 an temperature.
Secondly consensus, scientific or of any other sort proves nothing other than an opinion is held collectively to be true, It does not make something a fact. Those who cite “consensus” are essentially making an appeal to authority which is always suspect when discussing science.
Thirdly even if the alarmists are correct there is no way known that the sort of coordinated effort that is claimed as the “cure” can be made to happen politically on a global level for the rest of time as the activists insist is necessary.
Fourthly it is just hubris to think that we can control the climate a bit of humility about just what can be done would be warranted here I think.
Finally there is the religious aspect of this issue, in an age where surety about the existence of a more traditional deity has been just about wiped out by science the new green faith has taken over, Instead of the wrath of a Christian god we are extorted to supplicate ourselves to Gaia and by paying the right sort of indulgences (carbon taxes anyone ?) we can buy our way into a secular heaven.
As the Borg would say “Resistance is Futile”
That said I very much agree with your suggestion that there is a vast difference in the way that the middle class elites view the proposed actions and how they don’t appreciate that the costs of the follies like carbon taxes and ETS will hurt ordinary people for no real change in the climate.
By all means lets encourage the more efficient use of energy and the development of clever technology that helps us tread lightly on the planet but lets not kid ourselves that the science of climate change is by any stretch of the imagination empirical
I can’t say enough, amen to JC’s comment on modelling. It isn’t like people were extremely motivated to get financial markets models right, either!
Happily, as the Gorebiot learnt, and Krudd probably would have learnt, we have an awesome feedback mechanism by which the bogans can tell the elites to get stuffed, even if only intermittently.
Scale of 1 to 10 where 1 equals “probably no”, 10 equals “probably yes”:
The climate is changing? 11; It’s trending warmer? 9; This is “bad”? 8; Man caused this? 1; Man significantly contributed to this? 7; Man can modify his ways to assist? 6; Man can “fix it”? 0; Will the discussion be civil? 1.
Thank you LE for a thoughtful post.
@2 Legal Eagle
You say:
“And no, I don’t see the two sides as equal.”
But when your example of two sides discussing things is Einstein and Bohr, probably 2 of the most respected scientists in the history of the world, then you are equating them metaphorically, now that may not have been your intent, it may have just been a bad example, but that’s the way it reads to me.
Climate scientists already take the little value that they can get from the skeptics, case in point, the siting of weather stations in the USA. SurfaceStations.org (run by Anthony Watts a prominent AGW skeptic on the Internet) proposed that the increase in warming was due to poor siting of weather stations and then went and did something very useful. He got a whole lot of people to go and look at the weather stations and rate their siting according to the official rating scheme. Menne et al (2010) (http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf) then used their analysis to see if the hypothesis actually was correct. The answer was No, actually the weather stations that are rated as being well-sited give a higher warming trend and that both sets of stations have very similar trend lines. Menne et al. specifically acknowledge the work done by surfacestations.org:
“The authors wish to thank Anthony Watts and the many volunteers at surfacestations.org for their considerable efforts in documenting the current site characteristics of USHCN stations.”
You also say
“The majority of scientists accept the hypothesis that our climate is warming and that this is caused by CO2 emitted by humans. A minority of people (scientists and laypeople) do not. ”
It’s not the majority, it’s the vast majority of climate scientists who accept the AGW hypothesis (see the Skeptical Science link
– http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm).
I think your example of Wegener is very to the point, Wegener’s theory was rejected for two reasons initially, 1) it was mostly circumstantial and 2) it had no mechanism for continental drift. However, it wasn’t thrown out the door, it retained quite a number of supporters around the world up until the point that the data came in showing continental drift had actually occurred and then it quickly came to dominate.
The important issue is that Wegener’s theory wasn’t accepted until there was evidence to support it and then it was accepted quite quickly. Where’s the evidence to show AGW isn’t happening? The skeptics need to produce evidence that 1) CO2 doesn’t produce warming or 2) that some other mechanism is countering the CO2 warming. I’ve seen nothing convincing even from a layperson’s perspective to even match the circumstantial evidence that Wegener had.
You then say:
“The point is whether people who are in the minority can be heard. ”
I really don’t see how you can even make this point, global warming skeptics seem to have an endless ability to make their voices heard. In Australia, The Australian regularly posts op-eds by them. In the USA, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other major news papers publish articles by them all the time. In the UK, the Times and other papers publish anti-AGW articles regularly. We’ve had the The Great Global Warming Swindle shown on public TV in both the UK and Australia. You start the article saying you were on an SBS show specifically devoted to climate change skeptics. Ian Plimer had vast amounts of coverage in the media when he released his book. In what way are these people not being heard? Who has silenced Monckton? In what way is his voice not being heard? People have criticised Monckton heavily, my opinion is that he deserves the criticism, but nobody has stopped Monckton from talking anywhere.
The only media venue that they don’t get heard in to any great extent, is in the peer-reviewed literature and that’s because:
1) they rarely do any actual research
2) and the little they do, is generally not up to par.
When they do some reasonable research they get published, for example Richard Lindzen one of the few climate scientists who actually disputes AGW has had his Iris Effect work published for example and continues to publish in the peer-reviewed literature.
Now, I’m no expert on modeling, but I’ve read the responses from the people on Real Climate to this point and the fundamental difference they point out between climate models and financial models, is that climate models are physical models, they have the laws of physics built in to them, and as we all know well now, the laws of physics are just a tad more solid than the laws of economics and finances. From my layman’s perspective, this means that the criticisms of climate models on the basis that we know that financial models didn’t work are not particularly sound. In addition, even the simple models from the 80s and early 90s (such as Jim Hansen’s) have held up well in matching prediction to actual data.
Personally. I’m perplexed that an informed layperson can be agnostic on this issue in 2010, time and again, the empirical data supports the views of the climate scientists. Now assuming there is no global conspiracy amongst climate scientists, (and the fallout from ‘ClimateGate’ supports this), I don’t see how you can bet against them
cheers
Martin
@4 Nick Ferret
In what way do I prove her point?
@Martin – your attack on those who question climate change and your disparaging of debate on the question of whether climate change is real. One of LE’s most important points is that questioning of science, even when its “settled” is what keeps science honest. People ought always to feel free to do it.
Apologies, just had to let a bunch of people out of the spammer. As you were.
“Where’s the evidence to show AGW isn’t happening?”
Fark
*Insert 1000 word appeal to authority/ignorance/Purple Monkey Dishwasher here (With supporting geocities hosted URL)*
Additionally… I somehow missed that Noel Pearson article when it was first released. It is excellent, thank you for bringing it to my attention.
A great deal of LE’s post is to do with economic and class concerns as related to climate change. Most people rank beliefs and values in a hierarchy. Religions used to provide a means by which one could identify a given person’s ranked hierarchies and norms when one didn’t know much about him. That convenient metric has now gone, but it has largely been replaced by other systems.
People who adopt non-environmentalist concerns may rank liberty above the environment (I do, for the simple reason that environmental policy in non-free countries has been without exception disastrous). They may rank equality as more important, or economic prosperity.
All these concerns are legitimate and fair; before you say that they all depend on the environment, remember that proving climate change is one thing; proving that it is more significant than, say, liberty or equality or prosperity is something else entirely, and far harder to do.
“A great deal of LE’s post is to do with economic and class concerns as related to climate change”
.
Speaking of class (and cultural) concerns, I think one of the interesting things is that you get a different pattern of effects within and across countries. Perhaps it’s middle class people in rich countries that worry about it, but it seems to me (possibly incorrectly), that, overall, people in poor countries are more worried about it than people in rich countries. At a guess, I presume that’s because they realize they won’t have the money to adapt as well as other countries.
The other odd thing I have noticed when talking to some of my Euro-buddies, is that they seem to think that the nasty form of denialism (versus the legitimate questioning) seems to occur mainly in English speaking countries. Are there any non-English countries where you have really rabid denialist groups that have any power?
Conrad, perhaps in some countries, the government and the elites are sceptical (think of China, which successfully scuppered the Copenhagen talks) and it’s the hoi polloi who worry that the government has missed that something terrible is happening? This is just pure speculation on my part.
I’m sure the Indian government released a paper which was largely sceptical too. India and China are growing, developing economies, and they don’t want to be halted.
I should point out here that I’m certainly not saying we should ignore various predictions. I think that we should consider them very carefully, and we should consider our response very carefully. What I really hate is the feeling of being scared into precipitate action which may end up in disaster because it’s a panicked response. I’d infer that some of the other Insight participants felt the same way because many were mentioning scare-mongering.
I worry the lack of civility in the debate, and the inability of people in entrenched denier or believer camps to get out of their particular mindset.
LE
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you what you are getting at, I agree 100%. The modern western elite university system overwhelmingly works to ideologically groom, socialize, and attitudinally train a class of technocrats and managers to lead and manage a neoliberal political economy.
One method of achieving this is the inculcation of a class presumption of “knowing best”. This class is brainwashed that its values and decision-making processes have “science on their side”; are “rational”; and of course “just”.
It is the job of this class to ensure the system remains rational in the face of the braying demands of the irrational, bigoted, materialistic oiks whose sheer number are a constant nuisance and real threat of upsetting rational management and rule.
Note that neither wisdom nor scepticism is acceptable. They constitute presumptuousness and insolence in the face of “expertise”.
But because so much of what is taught at university in reality frustrates its graduates from learning the tools to make individual assessments of complex issues, “group think” takes over.
You are either with those members of your class, which the university system allocates as their subject – climate change, economics, international law, etc – OR you side with those outside your class – the braying mulletted, Plasma TV watching, unwashed hoi polloi.
It truly is frightening.
LE can I ask you not to use the “denier ” epithet?
It is used as a pejorative term as you yourself point out and it is emblematic of the arrogance of those who believe in AGW.
Well Put Peter Patton!!!
Oh, for the record, I defer to my fellow class experts on the historical account of climate up till now. I am sceptical of not only their prognosis – going forward – but even their ability to predict how it will pan out.
But it is at the stage of action, when the economists and lawyers enter the debate, piggy backying off the doomed prognoses of the scientists, that I part ways with my rational fellow class persons.
Iain @ 21 – sure – I hate it too because it sounds like Holocaust denier, which is surely the point.
LE
As you can see from the trackback below, I couldn’t confine myself to a mere comment.
As to being prickly about being called a “denier,” I do think it is a bit rich to say “Oh my God, they’re calling me a fascist apologist” when you have opened your post with an implicit (and actually quite unargued other than by reference to T S Eliot) accusation that advocates of climate change are officious self-important busybodies.
Actually, I think the T.S. Eliot quote applies to both sides, Marcellous. That was the point of the extract from Influence – once people bet on a horse, they become convinced that it’s the winner – and the possible harm that their position may cause ceases to interest them, because they are more interested in being consistent and thinking well of themselves. Will just update post to make that clear…
I do not think that all advocates of climate change are officious self-important busybodies. (I have close friends and family who are staunch climate change advocates, and I love ‘em.) However, I can’t stand the likes of Gore, Hamilton and Monbiot, who I would put in that category. Mind you’d I’d probably put Lord Monckton in that category too. I find him a bit freaky.
Anyway, have responded to your post on your site. Cheers, LE
Hi LE.
I’ve responded at length to your post at LP.
As I hope my post makes clear, I don’t question your sincerity or your motives, but I do very strongly question your arguments.
Thanks Robert. Gosh, the site is going slow, I suspect everyone’s reading it now.
Further to my comment above, Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist documents in great detail the importance of liberty and free markets for environmental protection. He also documents how, as countries become richer, their environmental protection improves, and not only because they can afford more.
There are good reasons, even for someone like me, to rank liberty more highly. I am not ‘progressive’ in the same sense as LE, but I recognise (and yes, I know some libertarians don’t) that there are profound reasons for ranking equality more highly than doing something about climate change.
It’s called the ‘incommensurability of values’, and it happens in politics and moral philosophy all the time.
Nuff said.
Class trumps knowledge and wisdom.
Peter Patton – thanks for making me laugh.
LE
Oh you’re welcome babe. The smile that lit up my face on reading the “science is but a discourse of power” crowd pound you for being an “agnostic” who will not “tolerate” your skepticism because it is “wrong”.
Shorter Climate Change Class Warrior:
It’s not about liberty, equity, or science, dammit. It’s all about ME, ME, ME!!
PP @ 33, 34, yes, you have cheered me right up.
And fancy you being so clueless about how science works, what with both your parents AND husband being scientists, and all.
Robert Merkel, you are a lecturer in software engineering? Commenting upon a non-expert’s view of the climate change debate in which one basic thread was a polite “can you all just stop shouting, while I think”.
If the science of climate change had as many data inputs/feedbacks as the Windows operating system has had since 1995, then we might expect it to be just as sound, stable and reliable. (I know my copy is stable because it checks every night for the latest critical patch).
What I mean is, there must be at least a couple of thousand Windows users by now – don’t you think? – all providing feedback under a variety of operating conditions. Certainly not as complex as “the accumulated knowledge of thousands of overlapping and replicated experiments and natural experiments, all contributing to our picture of past climates (in historic, prehistoric, and geological timescales) and the levels of things we believe contribute to the climate, as well as empirical studies of the the complex interactions of the atmosphere, the biosphere, the ocean, and other gas “sources” and “sinks”.”
Without question, you’d think the bloody thing would work by now. So, is that laziness or incompetence?
And when you say, “Do you get a Nobel Prize for doing something routine? Not bloody likely.”, I think of President Obama, who simply promised to do something, and he bloody got one.
For the way forward you say “While the economists pull out their econometric models to explain how this works, the gist of the reasons why it’s possible are pretty straightforward” I start wondering about the number of economists in the world, and will I ever read any two who agree?
Anyway, I agree with you – but the need for “intellectual shouting” is a worry.
Paul Krugman and Yassir Arafat have Nobel prizes. So what’s RM’s point?
Thank you, KVD. I really appreciate that.
LE you are welcome. You also mentioned abortion as being a touchy subject, so I’m now wondering if Mr Merkel might care to comment upon Vista. Certainly he is qualified to do so.
Legal Eagle,
Although I don’t agree with your views on climate change, I do certainly see a lot of group-think and a lot of hostility to alternate views.
I can see how values such as equality (or liberty) would impact on the policies to deal with the scientific consensus of climate change, however I can’t see what they have to do with interpreting the science itself.
I mean, what you described is how science works.
Thank you too, desipis.
And KVD – rofl.
kvd,
As someone with professional experience in developing computer models, the more I learnt about the computer models the less I respected the reported outcomes. However, there are two points that keep me on the side that AGW is true:
a) Basic calculations and observations indicate we are measurable and materially changing the chemical composition of our planet’s atmosphere; irrespective of temperature, I think that alone is risky enough without significant science to say it’s ok.
b) Basic thermal dynamics indicate that carbon dioxide will act as a greenhouse gas and measurably increase temperature; from my point of view the modelling is about accuracy of medium term predictions and assessing the impact of policy/actions rather than determining the truth behind AGW, so even if they are completely out I’d still back a reduction in carbon emissions.
desipis, please see my very first comment on this post, and understand that I agree with the science, and likely (pessimistic) outcomes.
And understand also that my comments carry no more weight in this discussion than can be imposed by 30+ years commercial (i.e. real world, paid on outcome) experience in computer modelling.
I don’t lecture, and I assume always that the person I am talking to has more knowledge in their chosen field than I do.
LE,
I’ve always been amused how I’ll be called a “right wing crazy” by people on the left and on the same issue be called a “left wing crazy” by people on the right. I’m either doing some right, or something very very wrong.
kvd,
Fair enough. I got distracted by all the computer talk and went off on a tangent.
Man can “fix it”? 0;
Nothing like a bit of faith in humanity eh?
Desipis — I should have been clearer earlier, apologies for that. I’m the one who has pretty boiler-plate views on climate science/AGW, but who does not accept that climate change policy is a ‘trump’.
I think that the extent to which it impinges on other values and policies (like equality or liberty or prosperity or pension provision etc etc) has to be taken very, very seriously, and that it is quite legitimate for a progressive (like LE) or a libertarian (like me) to argue that equality, or liberty, or some other value/policy is more important.
HEY ME TOO!?!
As usual you are stupid if you are not a warmer.
The ozone hole was caused by CFC’s, we were told.
We must stop using CFC’s to save it, we were told.
We got rid of CFC’s, as we were told.
The ozone hole got bigger. oops they said
The scientists then figured out it wasn’t CFC’s killing the ozone layer.
Oh yeah, please keep quiet while the scientists tell us we must stop using carbon.
And when they say “oops”, what then?
What about African nations that without coal or nuclear powered electricity will continue to use wood burning fires?
I suggest building them small thorium reactors, but of course the same greeny hair shirt brigade refuses to contenance anything other than wind and solar.
sigh
The Earth has been warmer than today.
The Earth has had exponentially more CO2 in the atmosphere than today
CO2 eventually runs out of spectrum to affect.
We know so very little about clouds it is frightening that any climate model is even allowed to make it into any scientific paper, let alone be relied on.
We also know little of feedgbacks – positive and negative (funny how they keep focusing on the negative!)
But when you agree we should reduce our reliance on carbon – they still call you stupid because you don’t embrace their religous fervour.
Just made the mistake of reading the LP comments. With reference to my first comment Man can “fix it”? 0; Will the discussion be civil? 1 – please forgive my naive optimism.
kvd, that’s very funny. May I also just point out that the redoubtable Kim is doing her best to keep it civil over at LP.
Have just added update to post re LP thread…
Sl – was just being morose, not funny. Now I’m off to bed to reread Lord of the Flies, just to restore some of my faith in the basic goodness of humanity.
(did somebody really say that bit about “brutishness and coarseness”?)
We are all doomed.
Unfortunately in order to do something we need to get public policy through the electoral process and most bogans would rather die than give up their V8s!!! =8-)
Legal Eagle,
If somebody is making a very silly argument, then it’s pretty hard to respond to it *without* it looking like you’re talking down to them.
Your argument boils down to a complaint that your position on climate change isn’t being taken seriously, and that it should be, irrespective of whether or not it is well thought out.
That’s just silly. As Robert pointed out on LP, your position is very badly thought out. Is there any particular reason why people should take your position seriously? Should this be extended to creationists and flat-earthers?
I can make an equally powerful argument that Robert’s post over at LP is badly thought out. It assumes that all progressives must hold climate change mitigation as a core value, when climate change mitigation is far more likely to hurt the poor than the rich. It contains a veiled threat (or, at the very least, falls into the trap of equating political beliefs with personal worth). It also engages in classic ‘mansplaining’, something that many women — with good reason — find very irritating.
I suppose that makes Robert and LE square, which doesn’t advance us very far, does it.
LE;
This argument is tiring in the extreme, isn’t it? If people were really concerned about the climate they would be agitating for nuclear energy. That’s it. They have no more argument to make.
As I keep saying (annoyingly I hope) the subsidy whores are not going to offer up anything other than less energy and less energy means a poor world. Propellers of sticks and magnifying glasses on plastic panels won’t produce a cow fart of a difference in terms of our energy needs. Further more these dopey technologies are divisible in terms of economic scaling which obviously means we’ll never ever be able to enjoy the benefits of marginal costs falling with rising levels of energy production that we would with nuclear and that we currently enjoy with coal fired planets.
Anyone who’s sincere about AGW and doesn’t support nuclear energy is bullshitting or they are anti-science. That’s all. There’s really no other argument.
Oh and great post by the way.
I’ve noticed (and now mentioned) that discussion over at LP automatically equates doubt about climate change with refusal to support any mitigation attempts. This is not so. Even people who outright deny any possibility of climate change (and LE certainly isn’t one of these) may have no objection to correcting the price of energy to reflect what it actually costs to produce. Actual mechanism choices to achieve this will vary (carbon tax or whatever) but the basic principle is sound and is most likely to get the widest possible public support that you need in order to get public policy through to law and actually implemented.
SL, you’re reading things into my post that I didn’t say. It
If LE or anyone else wants to defend the Lomborg pre-August-2010 position (in a nutshell, accepting climate science, but arguing there are more important things to worry about), fine. I’m perfectly prepared to have that debate. But that’s not what was offered.
Secondly, if you want to try and make me look silly by showing that climate change mitigation is going to hurt the poor at the expense of the rich, be my guest.
JHabermas, if I came across someone who was arguing passionately that the Earth was flat, I wouldn’t be rude to them, or call them stupid, or say that they should be ostracised. For one thing, it’s counterproductive: that kind of behaviour would hardly be likely to convince them, would it? That kind of behaviour is not about civil discussion, it’s more about group solidarity — a whole load of back-slapping “ain’t we good, ain’t that person over there stoopid”.
A lot of people in the world believe things which I consider rather silly, and that’s their prerogative. I’m happy to argue with them, but if they choose not to agree, that’s okay, as long as they are respectful of other people. I don’t know why people want to force everyone to agree with them. It’s like they need everyone to agree to validate their own view.
I salute the late Professor Schneider. What a good fellow he was to treat the Insight audience with respect. I never had the feeling that he looked askance at me or thought that I was stupid. In fact, he said that uncivil behaviour on both sides was much to be decried. I had a chat to him after the show and he was a very pleasant fellow. I’m sad that he passed away.
Deus, LE.
I slightly disagree with the political angle of the great essay you posted. I for one don’t think the traditional Marxist left is the problem here. My concerns with this issue and the people peddling expensive mitigation and extremely expensive alternatives aren’t traditional left.
Marx would be turning in his grave if he saw what some of them are saying in his name.
I see them more as misanthropic Malthusians who despair that humanity may be having sweet spot and short nasty brutish lives are far better as that will result in smaller numbers of humans.
In other words we recently saw an ALgore fanatic attack the innocuous Discovery channel, and described in his manifesto many, many times human babies as “filth”. This is the strain I hope the right won’t abide for a second.
Robert M.
Please. It was only last summer on a Tropp thread where you explicitly said that you would be rude, unabiding and unforgiving to all climate sceptics. Remember, Merkel?
If you want me to drag it up I will. You and your type are 99% of the problem.
Robert, I’m not LE. I have made a different argument (very consistently, I might add).
And I’m sorry, but I’m struggling to see the last par of your post as anything other than a veiled threat, especially when it comes to the mention of LE’s students and colleagues.
And climate change mitigation won’t be at the expense of the rich, which was rather my point.
Really Merkel. You wanna put some money on that, like real money? We can escrow and figure out a bet here.
How much are you offering and what odds? Don’t pansy out of the bet by walking away now.
Robert, I enjoy your posts and respect you, even if you do look askance at me from time to time.
Wouldn’t it be boring if we all thought the same?
Nonetheless, I don’t think I’ll be going back to LP for a long time after this. Nor do I intend to look at the thread on that post again. And now…I’m going to bed.
Veiled threat? He more or less said he was going to be not rude as I remembered, but abusive towards scepitcs here (below) doing a good impression of Brian the Catastrophist…
What Merkel was sludging towards was the old precautionary principle, which of course is circular reasoning. That’s because if Merkel is wrong he’s not counting the cost of him being wrong.
In other words the precautionary principle is hokus unless the other side is accounted for, in which case Merkel would be paying the skeptics for their losses finding potentially himself homeless and his salary garnisheed 100%.
And then to argue that it’s essentially free or that the poor aren’t going to be slugged is frankly dishonesty at its crudest form.
SL, I know perfectly well that you and LE are two different people (and have mentioned it on my post).
And if you or LE interpreted it as a veiled threat, I’m sorry. The reference to students and colleagues was picking up on something LE mentioned in her original post. But, as JHabermas put it, LE publicly made some very silly arguments on a topic of great consequence. If I made very silly arguments in public on a topic of great consequence, I would expect to be forcefully called on it. If they were truly silly enough, I would expect people to wonder about whether they should take anything else I say seriously.
And, yes, I get your claim that climate change mitigation won’t be at the expense of the rich. I just think you’re flat wrong, and am happy to thrash it out with you.
I’m happy to have a large bet with you Robert. And as i said we’ll escrow for obvious reasons.
By Jeez you’re sickening.
You don’t support or at least have never had the guts or the intellectual ability to support nuclear energy suggesting the subsidy whores can provide energy as cheaply as does coal.
I have an updated cost reference on the price of all alternative sources of energy from Credit Suisse; a large global I-bank. If you can refute their costs be my guest, Bob, because the two subsidy whores you’re peddling cannot provide our current energy needs at the current levels.
So if you think this would be a costless transfer as you seem to be suggesting, but hedging at the same time with weasel words then do so because you should be measured on exactly the metric on which you want to measure LE.
In other words you’re not just saying stupid things but you misdirecting people towards a wrong direction.
So go ahead Bob, present the argument as to how you’re going to make the transfer costless. If you remain silent, we’ll know what a huge jerk-off you really are.
I am sceptical on climate change for three reasons. One is the personal abuse, blanket attack on motives, the sneering and the flag waving. Seen this all before, it never leads to good places. Both the opposition to economic reform (which led to Australia being one of the best performing developed economies) and the advocacy of “it’s about racism and identity” indigenous polices (which have been a serial disaster) were marked by the same behaviour patterns.
There is a reason Noel Pearson is such an acute critique of progressivist outlooks.
The second is history. We have had “moral urgency” from new science before. For example, laissez faire economics and the reaction to the Irish famine and eugenics. As I have blogged about, both cases show great similarities to the current climate science “moral orthodoxy”. Including being a new science: climate science in the modern sense is a few decades old. That is a period where over-estimation of understanding is particularly likely and reinforcement of congenial moral prejudices is likely to what turns out to drive said exaggeration.
The third is the science. I am very uncomfortable with the over-use of computer models, the attempts to do away with the Medieval Warm Period, the presumption of positive feedbacks beyond the point when C02 has blocked all the heat in the particular wavelengths it carries, the secrecy about algorithms, the adjustment of data.
What worries me is where the allegedly trumping moral urgency seems to take folk.
It is a pity that the reaction in certain quarters seems to be what LE was sadly intimating. And I gave up on LP some time ago for just the sort of reason LE gives. (So did, for example, Sophie Masson.)
When science and public policy gets tied up in what are basically status claims, it is good for neither public policy or public discourse.
Ha yes, Noel Pearson was I believe referred to as a “coconut” at LP when he didn’t toe the helpless indig line the good people at that blog prefer their experiments to appear like.
I think it was that Noel Pearson, right Bob?
Robert has, as far as I’m aware, always been a consistent advocate of nuclear power, as am I (I spend a lot of time in France; it’s difficult not to be). He can correct that impression if it is wrong, so ease off, JC, until I know better. LE has gone to bed and DEM is photoshopping our weekly funny, so I’m here on my jack jones.
And Robert: if you write off a scholar or philosopher on all issues because you think they’re wrong on one issue, you’re a much sloppier thinker than I thought (you’d have to write off both Aquinas and Aristotle, not to mention Newton, for a start). In your own post, you have attempted to argue that advocacy of climate change mitigation is a core progressive policy when it is abundantly clear that progressives can have many concerns, and that those coming out of a Marxist tradition will not rate climate change as a core concern at all, for example. That suggests someone who is unwilling to consider that his own political tradition has many strands and components.
I accept standard climate science and yet I’ve watched you let a thread get utterly toxic and out of control, watched you patronise a woman who is orders of magnitude brighter than you are and fail to understand that I (as distinct from LE, who may wish to present her own view tomorrow) am not saying ‘do nothing’, but rather that to the extent that climate change mitigation impinges on liberty, it must cede ground. I can give good arguments for this (although, that said, Tim Harford has largely done the job for me).
LE has good arguments (neither you nor anyone else has addressed them, you were so busy mansplaining) that to the extent that climate change mitigation impinges on equality, it must cede ground. This is not Bjorn Lomberg’s position, and never has been.
Well I’ve read some of his comments at one pro-nuclear blog, SL.
He’s not pro-nuke as much as he’s pro-hobbled nuke, which means that he supports it as long as it’s regulated to the point where it can’t compete. In other words he’s bullshitting pro-nuke.
Bob of course can provide the links if he suggests I’m wrong, but from what I recall he sorta slinked off never to be seen there again promoting the usual sludge of solar panels and propellers on sticks.
Perhaps he’s graduated to peddle pushers these days for all I know.
However leaving that aside, the bobster implied that conversion/mitigation is costless, which of course interests me greatly, so I’m waiting with relish (not hot) to see what I can learn from the Bobster in how it would be.
However if he fails can I suggest that the Bobster is measured by exactly the same metric he offered LE because that would be really fun.
I’m still not even sure what the argument about equality is, to be honest. If you want to make the argument, then you’d have to say something like:
- what type of equality are we talking about (between countries, or within countries)
- what are the consequences for equality of non-action (ie. the default position)
- what are the standard options for mitigating the effects of climate change
- what are the consequences for equality of these options
- what action can be taken to mitigate any effects on any negative impact on equality that any of the options (including non-action) might bring with them
- after all of that, what is the preferred position from an equality perspective, and then weighing that against the other considerations
That’s (at a minimum) what you’d need to argue a robust position with respect to climate change and its impact on equality. Eg. it could be that the policy options for mitigation will entrench inequality (although I don’t believe it’s likely to), but the alternative is far, far worse.
I can’t see anything like that in the thread.
Despite now being told that LE’s argument is about inequality, there has been almost nothing written about it in this thread.
The closest that it gets is the statement that richer people can more easily afford $50 a month than poorer people. While true, that doesn’t say anything about the CPRS model that was put before Parliament, and it doesn’t say anything about whether or not any mitigation scheme would be capable or otherwise of compensating lower income earners.
And it’s this kind of policing utterances that makes me not want to take anything that any person who argues for climate change mitigation seriously.
Skepticlawyer, really.
LE may be orders of magnitude brighter than I am. Doesn’t alter the fact that her post displayed an understanding of the philosophy of science with all the subtlety and nuance of a losing Year 9 debating team.
Bright people can be wrong.
And if pointing that out makes me a sexist pig, tough.
Yes, I ignored much of LE’s post about the supposed motives of those who support mainstream climate science, because I happen to be a fan of the idea that one should at least make the attempt to come to a position through reason and argument. But if I were to make an argument on amateur psychology, I’d say that LE has caused her laudable intuitive sense of sticking up for the underdog to throw away her critical faculties and assume that the likes of Monckton are being picked on by the evil nasty scientists.
Why?
If you are worried about equality, then what I posted is the minimum you’d need to develop an argument on the subject.
I mean, LE’s argument about about equality rests on ‘$50 a week is easier for rich people to pay than poor people’ and ‘there is a potential for international carbon credit markets to develop into a form of neo-colonialism’.
The problem is that there is virtually nothing in there of substance, except a demand for the substance-less comment to be taken seriously.
Robert, I’m interested in your position on nuclear power. That, I suspect, is the deal-breaker.
And if you want to be a sexist pig, I’m happy to use my policy-wonkery-influence to make sure that you and people like you are not taken seriously. Anywhere, at least in the UK.
JHabermas, my concern (as I outlined in the post above) is that some of the policy measures advocated by people like Monbiot and Hamilton would end up reducing the equality in our society. The whole point of all of these schemes is to make fuel less affordable, is it not, so that there is a disincentive to using so much. If we ratchet up the price of fuel so that very few people can afford it, then we have a society where only the rich can afford to travel on planes, have cars, have nice products that come from abroad. I think the ramifications of this will affect our society greatly.
As also outlined in the post, I worry that some of the deep greens want to stop development in developing countries to keep them “carbon neutral”. The best way to get people to care about the environment is to let them develop, and side-step the more environmentally horrible technologies that the West tried. (Have you read any Amartya Sen? Hard to read, but worth it.) It’s hard to give a shit about the pandas if your children are starving.
While that’s true, LE, I think that there was pretty good compensation in the original CPRS. I may be wrong, but my understanding was that lower-income households were more than compensated for the rise in energy prices.
Secondly, I think that the point of putting a price of carbon is to alter behaviour patterns over the longterm. Ie. if you tell people that they’re going to be saving money by figuring out how to do things in a less-carbon intensive way, they’re going to figure out how to do things in a less carbon-intensive way.
Re: Amartya Sen, I’ve read ‘Politics of Hunger’ and ‘Development as Freedom’. If you have any other recommendations, I’d be glad to have them.
Anyway, I have to go to work so that’s it for me.
Robert, I don’t even like Monckton – I find his views disturbing! He displays a problematic lack of moderation. I’d not give him the time of day.
I don’t deny that climate change might be occurring. I am simply not sure. It’s incontrovertibly warming, and it appears that this is because of CO2. However, we should keep our minds open to other options, and allow for dissenting voices to be heard. This post was arguing for moderation and civility.
If I had written a post which was critical of you, and commenters on this blog had called you stupid, dishonest, ignorant, brutish and lazy (and inferred that you were into bestiality, for god’s sake!) I would have pulled them up quick smart, and said that there was no call for that kind of personal abuse, and that you were entitled to express your point of view. Do you think that it’s right for commenters to descend to that kind of abuse about me? Despite your initial stated respect for me, I’d say that your silence on LP means that you think I deserve it in spades.
One of the real problems I have with the Green movement is the authoritarian aspects – the notion that you have to force everyone to behave and believe in a particular way (eg, Hamilton would have a police state if he could). And if the people don’t behave and believe as you want, they have to be re-educated. And if they still don’t conform, they need to be shunned. What then? Do you force them at the barrel of a gun to believe as you do?
Then perhaps you’d feel more comfortable commenting elsewhere rather than a blog run by three women, Robert.
Good-oh, JHabermas, that is the same Sen as I have read.
The discussion of Pearson is intended to indicate that it might be particularly tough on the people who are not poor enough to be subsidised by a slim margin, because they will be being taxed to pay for the poor who do need to be subsidised. That is why these people are scared and worried. And I don’t think it sits well in my mouth to say to them, “just shut the f*ck up, you morons, you’ll be fine, listen to your betters.” Which is essentially what posts like Robert’s do.
Well I started reading Lord of the Flies, but put it down for two reasons. One – it was written by a Nobel prize winner. Two – it seems nothing has changed.
It is such a lovely day, after a horrendous weekend – and the weather has been a bit iffy as well – so I think I will put aside the greatest moral challenge of our time, and go see if I can find an economist or a software engineer capable of sticking to subjects in which they are qualified, whilst being polite about it.
I love my solitude.
I don’t think anyone is going to get subsidised, unless we all want to turn into Greece next week. We’re all too broke.
Good luck with being poor (and hey, I’m the libertarian, I’m not supposed to care).
For those that don’t know about history…here is a condensed version:
Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters / gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.
The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundations of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
1. Liberals, and
2. Conservatives.
Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That’s how villages were formed.
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement…
Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ’s and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.
Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. They became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.
Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass for obvious reasons.
Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but, most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.
Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn’t fair to make the pitcher also bat.
Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud or Coors. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.
Here ends today’s lesson in world history:
It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.
A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to piss them off.
And there you have it, period. Let your next action reveal your true self, I’m going to have another beer.
I enjoyed your post, LE. Most thoughtful
Welcome to the world of being savaged at LP. Don’t take it personally. On this subject more than any other, they just can’t help themselves. On the other hand, their absolute refusal to allow the legitimacy of doubt, or the possibility of error, is more than a little strange, and discomfiting. They hate the heretic as much as the Inquisition ever did.
Well I wasn’t expecting THAT! =8-)
Skepticlawyer, my views on nuclear power are well known.
In a nutshell, civil nuclear power is a safe and environmentally benign energy source. On the environmental front, I’d even go so far as to say its environmental impacts are lower than, say, wind power, though such calls get back to those nasty value judgements.
Furthermore, with current and medium-term foreseeable technology, and despite well-publicized failings in the attempt to get the construction pipeline going again in Europe, it is likely to be much, much cheaper (possibly an order of magnitude cheaper) to use nuclear power to replace much of our stationary energy supply than renewables. That is speculation on my part. Reasonably informed speculation, but speculation nonetheless. On this point, I dismiss some of the more breathless advocacy for renewable energy, which shows a great deal of selective technological faith not borne out by history.
However, as somebody who accepts that markets (for all their faults) usually do a reasonable approximation of maximising utility, my view is that we should remove prohibitions, impose an appropriate regulatory structure on nuclear power, put a price on carbon and let the market sort it out.
Furthermore, I think the more urgent matter in the Australian political context is to get the price put on carbon rather than remove the prohibitions on domestic nuclear power.
Without a price on carbon or something equivalent, nuclear power will never be cheaper than burning coal in a plant right next to the mine. As such, until there’s a price on carbon removing the prohibition on nukes is meaningless.
Secondly, it’s my view that, given the genuine and widely held antipathy to nuclear power in Australia, the only way it’s going to ever get wide political acceptance is for there to be a recognition that renewables aren’t the solution (or, at least, aren’t the solution on their own). That realization can only come once there’s a price on carbon and investors actually have to put their hands in their pockets on this. It may turn out that I’m wrong, and a basket of technologies will advance to the point where nuclear power is unnecessary to meet even the most stringent emissions targets in Australia without imposing a significant additional cost burden. If so, fine. Nuclear power is a means, not an end in itself.
‘You cheated.’
‘Pirate!’
‘Thread of Doom?’
‘Climate Change!’
Pricing stuff to reflect all costs involved is simply sensible policy. How to do that is much harder ask. While trading pollution credits worked very well with “acid rain” in the US, the experience with carbon trading has been less happy. Besides, carbon is not a pollutant in any reasonable meaning of the term (it promotes plant growth for one). If one is going to go down that route, I prefer a carbon tax with offsetting tax cuts.
The argument about whether acting seriously on climate change will adversely affect the poor is already lost, because it demonstrably has done so. The example of the effect of biofuels on world food prices is quite clear.
The argument that “X is silly on Y so they have to be regarded as dubious on anything else” is patent nonsense. It is, however, the sort of lever one pulls if one is setting up status markers. (“Good people believe X”.)
And attitudes to nuclear power is an excellent way of sorting the serious from the poseurs.
And I am with LE on Monckton, except that I am willing to listen to him on applying mathematics (his area of expertise) and I do enjoy how he enrages certain people when he does so.
See, SL. He’s a first rate bullshit artist about nuclear power.
No Merkel, of course we just want another Chernobyl.
As I said sickening.
I’m still waiting for you to explain how conversion is costless.
This isn’t LP, Merkel where you can get away with that sort of crap and then censure the comments section.
Curious the Robert thinks it to be “intellectually lazy”, when it seems the exact opposite is true. It is far easier to sit back and appeal to the authority of the IPCC and consensus science. Being skeptical requires an awful lot of reading.
It’s team thing Arrron. If you’re not part of the team, you’re a beast.
Look i disagree with LE about AGW, longer term it could very well turn out to be a pretty bif potential problem on our hands.
However the way to deal with that is to endure scaling up on nuclear power that could if left unhobbled potential create cheaper power than coal.
However you’re not going to get that sort of rationalization from Discovery channel algore fanatical zombies.
I do think that a hell of a lot of the argument on threads like this would be unnecessary if skeptics or agnostics or deniers, whatever, were forced to attach numbers to their notions. L. Eagle doesn’t think that man-made global warming is proven: fine, but what does that mean? 99%? 95%? 50%? 5%? 1% As is is, her speculations are without economic consequences. If I think there’s a 5% chance of losing $100, I’ll willingly pay $4 to avoid it; if I just innumerately think I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether I’m going to lose $100 or not, I just sit there woolgathering until something hits me upside of the head.
To put it in legal terms, L. Eagle may think that the case for mmgw hasn’t been made beyond reasonable doubt; what about the lower level of balance of probabilities? What about the lower level still of reasonableness? Without some concept of measurement, we’re just wittering.
LE
What ChrisB means by attaching numbers is having your estimates tattooed on your forearm closer to the hand so people can see it.
These Discovery channel algore fanatics are amusing.
ACCOUNT OF PROFITS FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT. So there.
kvd @ 37 – people who care enough about stability and reliability don’t run windows. Companies like Microsoft would rather divert development resources elsewhere.
Legal Eagle @ 61 – but what if you came across someone whose views you believed were actually causing harm to only themselves or their families but to other people around them – say for example someone refusing to vaccinate their children and encouraging others not to vaccinate their children.
Chris @ 99: My point is about the conduct of the debate. If someone is an anti-vaccination advocate, well, that’s pretty silly from my point of view, but I’m not going to get anywhere or convince them by forcing them to shut up. In fact, it will just fuel their conspiracy theory mentality.
You can’t convince everyone in the world to agree with you. And people will sometimes believe things that you believe are harmful or problematic. That’s life.
Legal Eagle @ 100 – I think the anti-vax debate is one where there are clear benefits by getting the anti-vaxxers to shut up – fewer people who take their advice and decide not to vaccinate. As you’re probably aware because of various anti-vaccination campaigns vaccination rates have dropped low enough in some areas of Australia its causing real health problems.
And while I don’t support stopping them talking using legal means, I’ve no problems with people being very active, public and noisy at responding whenever they start pushing their damaging views.
I think the analogy to climate change here is that if the majority of scientists are correct (and I think they most likely are), then we needed to start doing something quite a while ago. And inaction promoted by some skeptics will result in causing real harm.
LE, you say that your point is the manner in which respondents conduct themselves when debating climate science.
Why then do you claim that Clive Hamilton would like us to live in a police state?
Why do you say the “Green movement” forces everyone to behave and believe in a certain way?
Why do you say “I can’t stand the likes of Gore, Hamilton and Monbiot”?
These comments do not appear to meet the same high standards you espouse.
As you Have discovered LE the reality is that for many Warministas this is a faith issue and those who don’t pray precisely as they do are heretics whom they would gleefully have burnt at the stake.
Okay, there are a few things I have to clarify here.
First, I have thought about the vaccination analogy and I don’t think it’s valid at least in my case. My opinion is not that we should simply sit back and do nothing.
As I said over at Catallaxy, personally, I don’t think carbon pricing mechanisms are the way to go, because I think they will lead to a more unequal society. Rather I’d prefer that we concentrate on alternative energy sources and developing technology to try to sequester carbon. I get frustrated because my husband did research into alternative energy sources years ago, and despite all the rhetoric, there was no one willing to do anything with it or to commercialise the research. Perhaps if people had concentrated on that rather than ETS etc, we’d be getting somewhere.
WBB, Clive Hamilton said in a 2007 article in the Courier Mail:
And why do I say that the Green movement forces everyone to act in a certain way? I presume you’ve been participating in the LP thread? How happy would you be to stand up and dissent in that forum? Go on, I dare you. I met environmentalists on the Insight program who had been totally ostracised from their community simply for wondering if climate change really was occurring. This does not go for all in the green movement by any means, but there are enough that I tend to avoid them like the plague. I don’t like authoritarians.
As for why I dislike Monbiot? Well that is pure prejudice on my part – he’s a High Tory, and I’m allergic to High Tories.
Chris at 99. My mention of Windows was only as an example of a “model” which had many millions of feedbacks, many billions of funds thrown at it, and yet was still unstable – i.e. unreliable. The contrast in my mind between that scenario and the immense interlocking factors in modelling climate change (quite succinctly put as a throwaway line by Robert M) just underlines in my mind the possibility of slight error in climate modelling. Yet this is not acknowledged, and worse still, mention of such possibility is attacked as heretical. But your basic comment I certainly agree with.
Legal Eagle @ 104 – FWIW I think there’s a big difference between being skeptical about the overall conclusions about climate science (and the need to do something to address the problem) , and being skeptical about specific solutions – eg carbon price, direct action etc.
My view is I don’t think the former is very defensible anymore, but that there’s still room for debate on the latter. Though because of time urgency there is a great advantage to starting things *now* even if change the broader approach over time.
Also I think you’d find proponents of alternative energy sources would welcome a carbon price because they know it will lead to funding which will commercialise those projects. I think we probably need a mix – use market mechanisms and perhaps some government money to make some long term guesses.
Direct action schemes however will also not be without detriment to the disadvantaged in society. It will mean government money diverted from schools/hospitals etc.
Finally after Climategate, etc and the latest with heavyweight statisticians weighing in to draw a straight line(or an equally certain declining one) through their infamous tree ring hockey stick of certainty, Pachauri comes out and says it’s not about undefinable and uncertain certainty but all about advocacy, policy prescriptions and their big Govt numbers. Nothing to do with the sustainability of the Global Gruesome Greasum here skeptics. As for the previous certainty of these erstwhile data deniers it was a bit like producing statistics to show that in your city there was a 95% chance you could die on the roads today so stay home for the day. Welcome to their new ironclad science of conflation. Whilst many could be skeptical of the automatic leap of faith with such a prescription, along comes statistical analysis to show that whilst the risk may be true the data shows we can go days without a death and what’s with this staying home in bed recommendation?
Take a bronze statue of any alarmist climatologist and stick it in a tub of hot water with a thermometer in its mouth and voila their laboratory physics of AGW is proven. Do the same with the real climatologist and we’re all left wondering which field of science to choose from to explain a lot of uncertainty all of a sudden. Trust them, they’re self appointed, peer reviewed Govt climatologists naturally and don’t listen to any skeptical chemists, physicists, biologists, medicos, etc. After all what would they know about climatology?
The problem of correlation isn’t causation aside, what about the unanimity of their Groupthink grand global prescription? Carbon credit creation and trading for the likes of Morgan Sachs and Co. It’s our only hope folks and trust the vision splendid of your betters. Some fresh faced kid drops around home to change some light bulbs and shower heads, do a quick calc of average CO2 saved to throw at Morgan Sachs forever more and they’re going to build their grand plan/ vision splendid for all on that sort of eminently overturned and reversible nonsense? You didn’t have to progress to an analysis of knocking over rainforest for biodiesel or putting the world’s food in our tanks via ethanol to see what was coming with that sort of wild imagination. The sublime irony of Hopenchangen and a bunch of pro Maoists telling a gaggle of amateur Western leftist hallucinogenics- In your bloody dreams!
Chris, to my mind climate change has been proven to the civil standard (‘on the balance of probabilities’). This is lower than the criminal standard, but is still onerous, as anyone who has had to manage discovery (both LE and I have) in a large civil action knows.
Beyond reasonable doubt (the criminal standard) is brutally exacting: always remember it was developed in both Roman and common law as a means to ward off the death penalty. That’s why it’s so onerous. Modern people, living in societies where the law has dispensed with the ‘supreme punishment’ often fail to grasp where the high standard comes from.
I do think balance of probabilities represents a pretty solid evidentiary standard, which is why I am not a sceptic.
Woops! ..95% certainty someone would die on the roads today..
“… climate change has been proven to the civil standard …”? Not sure what you mean here. The IPCC uses “90% probability, but this declaration should not be confused with real statistics. There are simply no data used, it is just a feeling or judgement made by SOME scientists. The quasi-statistical expression is used to sound as if there was actually a probability calculation. There is most certainly not.
Besides, as a retired scientist myself, I believe in the science of climate change, but only up to a point. Sure, all things being equal, a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases will lead to an increase in temperature of 0.8-1.2 degrees C. What happens after that is the real question. The IPCC claims, with almost no evidence, that increasing evaporation causes water vapour in the trophosphere to increase and that this stronger greenhouse gas will add a further 2-5 degrees C. In other words, their models depend on very positive feedback. Many scientists, myself included, believe that negative feedback (cloud shading, etc) will predominate. All natural systems are governed by negative feedback and we live on a watery world. Hence, I do not believe in CATASTROPHIC climate change.
In any case, the IPCC reports exaggerate so many things that it is hard to take them seriously.
Well well! What a lot of sophisticated words dedicated to a relatively unsophisticated argument!
But before I get on with my own thoughts, congratulations to LE for citing at least two notable scientists who share names with members of the Bee Gees. I hereby challenge you to continue to cite Bee Gees members in your posts in future.
Anyway.
First, I think that if we are going to demand that others remain self-reflective and open about their positions, they’d better be damned sure they’re doing the same. So let’s all be careful that we look for the planks in our own eyes before attempting to remove those in others. In practice, it means that all of us must first assume the best in each other’s arguments. That includes you LE – I do think a few of your statements reflect assumptions rather than reasons (eg that the left has “swallowed” climate change policy whole). At the same time, it’s easy to understand why those who have genuinely worked hard on this and who have genuinely found deep fears for humanity – it’s a big word but there it is – might feel annoyed that we’re not getting past all this. But we must do it, and do it together. And part of that might be by convincing somebody as intelligent and deep and fierce as Legal Eagle that, on the evidence we have available, we are likely – not certain but likely – to be in deep shit if we don’t do something.
Second, If this is about equality vs environmentalism, I don’t think it’s a matter of polemics. Sometimes equality is pitched against environmentalism. In this case, I simply have to disagree.
You say the old “it’s hard to give a shit about the Pandas if your family is starving” line. But it’s pretty hard for everyone to give a shit about anyone if we’re all starving, or if land is disappearing. If climate change tips us all into struggle and poverty, what hope do we have of finding human ingenuity to pull us all out of it without the prosperity that leads to the luxury of intellectual thought? Noel Pearson’s argument was actually relatively limited: he was describing the terms of the debate. But he wasn’t broadening his analysis to the content of the issue, which is how climate change would actually impact on all those groups.
So I don’t believe that equality can be lined up against environmental action, and I think that there are a number of leading writers who have characterised the environmental movement as a whole in that way, which is sad. It’s like saying all doctors are butchers at heart.
Third, perhaps I can relate my own journey out of climate skepticism.
I was a proud skeptic, for a long time. But I believe I was wrong. It was only when I let go of presumptions about those who are in the green movement and had a look at what we actually know.
I had refused to buy into climate science because I (although a conservationist) saw environmentalists as tribalist malthusian doomsayers who would unwittingly destroy the quality of life of developing peoples for the sake of their own self-importance. I had seen evidence of this on the matter of population control in the developing world, and that is why I will never be an anti-populationist, unless it were an absolute last resort. (But that’s another story…)
Anyway, I believe I was wrong. And it’s all to do with Judge Learned Hand’s calculus of negligence. That is:
Burden = Gravity x Probability
If you are causing harm to another person, you should be expected to avert that harm after considering if the burden of averting it is outweighed by either a high probability of harm or a high severity of harm, or both.
Thus we have four elements: Causation, Probability, Gravity and Burden.
The “precautionary principle” is just another articulation of this: if the scientists are right, we’re screwed. Like, we’re seriously screwed. If they’re right. And they’ve largely only been proven to be too conservative so far.
On each of these issues I examined what I knew about the situation. Where I did not have the expertise, I did as a court would do – deferred to expertise, without giving up a critical eye for sources. (I should also admit to my own limitations in this – I am a busy mother of young children and need to make judgements about who and what I choose to incorporate into my views. I could therefore be rendered a fool)
Say what you like about the probability – this is where “skeptics” are on the safest ground. That the models are wrong. It’s the least concrete area of the science.
It’s the gravity that gets me. The gravity of climate change has been far easier to project, because it has lots of mini-studies to throw behind it. Things are happening already. Tuvalu and the Maldives are actually shrinking. Antarctica actually has more days above zero degrees than before – for a long, long time according to ice studies. Ancient sea creatures called Terrapods are having their shells dissolve with higher carbonic acid levels in the Southern and Antarctic waters. This is what is making scientists shout from the rooftops, only to be told they’re being too emotional? Not scientific enough? Not skeptical enough? LE you mention not being convinced by Prof Schneider – what was it that didn’t convince you?
Even if you’re not interested in scientists themselves, look at some recent high-profile turnarounds: Britain’s Daily Mail science reporter took a trip to Greenland and has returned with a scathing view of climate change “skeptics”.
LE you asked “why such passion” about this issue and posited that it could be entrenched bias. What about simple fear for humanity? Is that just too daggy for you lot? Because it seems that there are a lot of people who are driven by a simple concern and fear for humanity – for our own children and grandchildren.
And what’s the burden? Inequality? LE – you said it yourself, that there would likely be subsidies. Why are you assuming that certain groups would miss out more than others? Maybe this should be the debate you should turn your ample intellect to – how to mitigate the structural changes required? There are a number of agencies, reports and groups now who have come up with extensive and costed schemes for transforming our oil-based economies into something different.
Human ingenuity is rarely a match for the earth, especially if we decimate our own population. And they could well be right.
I am no scientist, but I do defer to scientists as intelligent, educated, both collaborative and often fiercely competitive people. Imagine if you were a scientist who disproved climate change models. I’m sorry – you would not be howled down. You would be published and interviewed and interrogated and elevated and ridiculed. But you would NOT be silenced.
A further issue I have is that you seem to cite the law as a good model for examining this issue. I would seriously disagree. The law is no model of consensus, and without consensus – wonky old arguments about preponderances without bright shiny tested hypothesis in controlled environments – we would all be happily motoring around as Pakistan drowns and Russia burns down. Oh wait, we’re doing that already…
No really, our legal model is to hold up shaky arguments drawn on tissue paper and hope the darts don’t do too much damage. Adversarial law is at times necessary but often counterproductive and highly overrated. It entrenches closed-mindedness and division. “Shooting down” in this situation is exactly what’s happening – there’s a big, carefully drawn structure beign drawn and a bunch of people with pointy darts trying to bring it down. In the end, we may all be left with nothing, just like the worst litigation (or for that matter the worst sort of Civilisation battle). This is why I maintain my support for Gillard’s “consensus-building” approach to this issue. Surely it’s perfect for the agnostics such as yourself?
Finally, what word would you prefer other than “denier”? Please tell me. Apparently “skeptic” is a contested word – some people are “proper” skeptics, some are not. “Denier” is out, even though it’s an appropriate term in a number of cases. Really, I’d like a better word…
LE, science is elitist. The opinions of Christopher Monckton and James Hansen on climate science are not of equal value. Both men toured Australia earlier this year and the media played way more attention to Monckton than Hansen on climate science. IT is not true that skeptics are being ignored — they are getting more attention than they deserve.
As for your specific comments on the science, yes, it is possible that he scientific consensus on AGW will be overturned. In fact, it’s already happened. After Arrhenius first proposed the theory, the consensus was that the CO2 absorbtion bands were saturated so that more CO2 would not mske a difference (an argument made by Lorenzo in comments above). But observations proved this wrong (see Spencer Weart) and the consensus was overturned. Given all the evidence that we now have it is extremely unlikely that the current consensus will be overturned.
Financial models are different from climate models in that they are not based on physics. When modelling the atmosphere we know that energy and momentum are conserved and the Navier-Stokes equations are satisified. It is true that some properties are too complicated to derive from Newton’s laws and have to be parameters to the model, but this is nothing like financial models that are just fitted to past data. In any case, if the behaviour of financial models is relevant, this strengthens the case for action. The financial modles undersestimated the risks if the climate models are doing the same, it is possible that warming could be much worse than the IPCC thinks likely and we should insure against this by reducing our emissions.
Nor does the case for the amount of warming we would expect if we keep putting CO2 in the atmosphere depend on climate models. If you are interested I made the case in my debate with Monckton which you view here.
Bloody hell.
Now I know it’s more than the redesign of LP that’s made me stop reading it – I’ve been reading it daily for years.
I cannot fathom why this, one blog post is important enough to have Robert do such a big post about it – and then the stacks on with very little reference to the issue being discussed – the rhetoric.
Appalling.
FWIW I’m firmly in the climate change camp, vote Green, advocate for social justice etc (ie as bloody left as one can get) and fully support LE in this, as living in a small progressive town daily have to put up with the you-must-think-like-me style of ‘left’ living.
Not toeing the line, in our case not being anti-GM, not buying organics, believing in vaccination and nuclear power, enjoying aspects of car culture, this does have a real social cost – and everything that comes from that.
The sheer look of horror and later scowls in checkouts (I THOUGHT you were one of US) is pathetic when it is revealed that you don’t buy organic and as LE has indicated this attitude is a major problem for the ‘left’.
I’m sure many who read and comment on this blog similarly have feet (and other limbs) all over the left/right — I for one thank you & SL for giving us a little place to feel not so isolated.
Thank you, Miss Candy. I count you among my treasured climate change friends (if you know what I mean) and I respect your opinion. I do really dislike the Malthusian doomsaying aspect of much climate change policy, and I very much dislike climate change hysteria. But I think the other thing which has really affected my view is a better understanding of economics. It’s not simply a matter of introducing subsidies, and then the poorest will be okay.
The first rule of economics is that there are often unintended consequences to well-meaning measures. I think we have to be really, really careful with that, and not rush things through in a panic.
Miss Candy, you’ve used legal arguments in exactly the same way that you’ve chastised LE for so doing, which is odd. Since we’re on the law, though, I’ll add a bit of my own lawyering to Learned Hand J’s calculus of negligence.
We all know the difference between the standard required to get a prohibitory injunction as opposed to that required for a mandatory injunction.
For the non-lawyers among our readers, a prohibitory injunction preserves the status quo ante; that is, it typically tells a party not to do something. The signal example is the midnight injunction preventing bulldozers from knocking over a heritage building (would that more had been directed at the ‘Demolition Deen Brothers’ when I was a tot, but that’s a very Queensland story).
A mandatory injunction, by contrast, tells a party to undertake a particular activity. Unlike protecting the heritage building, it changes the status quo: it is positive.
Courts make it much harder to get mandatory injunctions (and related beasties, like Mareva injunctions or Anton Piller orders). They want evidence of a very high standard, and very often — as with all equitable remedies — even when the evidentiary standard is met, the court does not grant the injunction. The balance of convenience does not favour the order.
The precautionary principle is the environmental equivalent of a mandatory injunction. It wants to change the status quo ante. It also wants to remove public policy discretion in much the same way as remedies at common law are not discretionary. I think this is very dangerous and damaging, because it does not allow people (or governments, or politicians) to rank something more highly than climate change mitigation. You rank environmental issues above equality. I rank liberty above both. And that’s fine. I think Tim Harford’s arguments in The Undercover Economist on the link between liberty and lower pollution rates, cleaner rivers and other environmental ‘goods’ gives me a very good reason to rank liberty above climate change mitigation. Note that this does not mean ‘do nothing’, as DEM pointed out above.
I am not a climate change skeptic or agnostic, but as in the equitable jurisdiction, I wish to retain my discretion. And I want my government to retain its discretion. There’s a reason why equitable principles evolved entirely independently of each other in the only two legal systems on the planet that matter: Roman and common law.
People need to be able to balance the convenience.
Thank you, Tim Lambert, I shall look at the Monckton debate with interest. And thank you also for being respectful and polite, although I know your position differs from my own. It is much appreciated.
Let me declare like LE I’m an agnostic on the science of AGW. However the correlation between publicly paid policy-makers, economists, scientists and pseudo-scientists and advocacy for the commonly espoused prescriptions to ameliorate the perceived threat is undeniable and extremely problematic. I am an avowed opponent of their lunar Groupthink prescriptions based on rational examination of the facts. Their pipedream of a global ETS, with all it’s negative externalities, jurisdictional problems, rorting and ineffectiveness to date has thankfully been demolished but their other prescriptions for ‘reshiftable’ energy require likewise. It has to do with energy density and reliability as succinctly outlined here-
http://brookesnews.com/?p=92
Not all publicly paid officials are blind ideologues and I can respect the beliefs of the odd believer in AGW like Barry Brook who is a heretic among these true believers for advocating nuclear power for the obvious-
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469
The publicly paid, ironclad science of conflation between science and prescription has been the greatest slur on modern science and the scientific method the world has ever seen. We should not confuse the two despite the best efforts of so many of these quacks and shucksters to do so. Neither should we overlook attempts to improperly denigrate reasonable AGW science via guilt by association with faulty prescription. There are two different issues to carefully consider and clarify here.
SkepticLawyer,
“The precautionary principle is the environmental equivalent of a mandatory injunction. It wants to change the status quo ante.”
That really depends on how you frame the issue. Is the status quo ante the pumping of carbon into the atmosphere, or is it the current level of carbon already in the atmosphere? If you accept the later then a precautionary policy is more the equivalent of a prohibitory injunction. As a engineer I’d chose to frame the issue around the state of the system, rather than around the actions of people, as the law might focus.
Reducing emissions falls firmly into mandatory injunction territory. Pricing carbon, however, is more equivocal, especially if the price is ‘real’.
Oh bullshit Lambert. Financial models have sets of parameters like they do in physics models. The idea that they are different is misleading, as is most of crap you propagandize.
In fact a large numbers of financial models have their basis from the probability models originally developed at Bell labs such as Black Scholes, which is broadly used to price option volatility and has its genesis from the probability theories and equations first used to figure telephone connections.
Models are basically parameters; machines recognize the input in terms of parameters given and the data that’s used to perform calcs within those closed systems.
You really have no idea what you talking about, which make me both shocked and unsurprised at the same time.
Be nice, JC.
Someone tipped over the italics jar. It has now been righted.
And JC, Tim wasn’t rude. Lots of other people have been, but Tim wasn’t. That’s a large and important difference. I may be a libertarian, but this isn’t Catallaxy. Just sayin.
If you’re in Melb, maybe you need to head over here:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/09/06/the-monthly-argument-strikes-again/
Reducing emissions falls firmly into mandatory injunction territory.
The history of environmentalism often involves mandatory injunctions. The ozone hole, cleaning up rivers and oceans, fish catch management. We need mandatory injunctions because people will often chase short term gain at the expense of others or the environment. Mandatory injunctions are not pleasant or desirable but it is wrong to claim something is bad just because it is a mandatory injunction. It is utopian to think that we can regulate society and human behavior without mandatory injunctions.
Sure thing LE, sorry.
LE. Don’t let him confuse you.
Financial models particularly trading models have similar sets of characteristics as predictive climate models. You have the data and then you draw a moving average over the data to ascertain a trend line. That’s an art more than a science, which is why you’re going to have disputes. Where do you draw the line from and why?
If any climate modeler was 100 % certain he or she could draw perfectly calibrated trend-line over a data set then they should mozy on to Wall Street and after a few years walk out as billionaires.
I think on second thoughts Lambert confused himself with what we’re discussing, as he seems to think I may be talking about basic financial models that aren’t predictive when in fact I wasn’t. No harm.
I was talking about predictive trading models or models such as value-at-risk (VAR). Trading models are nothing more than raw data sets with superimposed trendlines.
Go here.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:BAC
At the bottom of this chart you’ll see a drop box marked as “technicals”. Google gives you a broad selection of studies to superimpose over a data set, which in this case is the stock price for BAC- bank of America.
Choose whichever one you want and off you go. Pick the right one and you can make a lot of money.
Okay, okay, SL.
JC,
The mechanics of how the models work might be similar, but the application and implication from the results is quite different. One major difference is that the laws of physics don’t change, while the patterns seen in financial markets are constantly shifting to unpredictable changes in technology, culture, politics, financial modelling techniques, etc. Another major difference is that physics models are built from the bottom up from basic underlying and very well understood laws of physics, while financial models are constructed from a top down view attempting to identify patterns in historical data and fit functions’ inputs and outputs to the range of available data.
The implications for accuracy, consistency and confidence are significant.
I move in very upper class circles and I can assure you Legal Eagle that the toffs are skeptics to a man. It is the oiky middle classes who are into AGW, because they are all puritans with inferiority complexes.
The mechanics of how the models work might be similar, but the application and implication from the results is quite different. One major difference is that the laws of physics don’t change, while the patterns seen in financial markets are constantly shifting to unpredictable changes in technology, culture, politics, financial modelling techniques, etc.
Despidis:
I have a data set going back 30 years. Choose a trendline method starting from x to construct a predictable outcome. You can do it for the stock price of BAC or the climate. There are also parameters in financial markets or at least there would be. The US dollar say is unlikely to go to zero and it’s unlikely to go to 4 euros in a year for instance. So you can construct parameters.
Another major difference is that physics models are built from the bottom up from basic underlying and very well understood laws of physics, while financial models are constructed from a top down view attempting to identify patterns in historical data and fit functions’ inputs and outputs to the range of available data.
Explain exactly how you understand top down.
The implications for accuracy, consistency and confidence are significant.
Predicting the future is hard and is hard in most areas except say predicting our own demise (not when).
RL – That’s not true. The Toffs have simply organized the first tourist space ship: HMS Titanic II (far more luxurious) with a view to seeing Saturn while Mother Earth creates real estate opportunities.
In any event Depsisis if it’s so easy to predict the climate’s future I would be expecting a large number of these climate scientists to die very rich people because if they’re right they should be able to construct some excellent reading strategies and not bother with trying to bet sceptics a few dollars 20 years hence.
Do you know anyone that’s placed bets with trading positions?
John H: I’m not saying mandatory injunctions are bad (I have applied for, and obtained, both sorts of injunction in my career), but that it is fair and reasonable that they be harder to obtain than prohibitory ones, and that sometimes other factors prevent the court so ordering them.
Also, the CFC problem was solved using a market mechanism facilitated by law (which is exactly how markets are supposed to work).
Rococo Liberal
How long does it take to become one of these upper-class hobnobbing tax lawyers?
Not that long, PP, if you can figure out the tax bit
I appreciated the original post LE and without expressing my own opinion on climate change, might I gently suggest that there is more than the ‘racetrack’ analogy at work in some of the discourse on this subject.
It is my theory that there are many people out there who are just plain bullies. They are skilled at finding situations which legitimise their nastiness.
Thus, in the case of climate change, there are those who recognise where there is a conflict, get on one side or another and then feel free to hurl abuse at the other side. If they can ‘see someone off’ a particular site, so much the better.
Those who really truly believe in their ‘side’ of the argument would be well advised to get rid of the bullies. They only muddy the water, entrench opposition by cutting off discussion, and add nothing to the debate.
Oh, and I don’t mean by getting rid of the bullies, that they should necessarily be censored – merely ‘outed’. They do so hate that.
@13 Nick Ferret
“@Martin – your attack on those who question climate change and your disparaging of debate on the question of whether climate change is real. One of LE’s most important points is that questioning of science, even when its “settled” is what keeps science honest. People ought always to feel free to do it.”
Trying not to be sarcastic here, but what I wrote was hardly an attack, you clearly have never been a researcher, as it was hardly what I would call even robust debate. My PhD students would tell you that I’m much harsher on a regular basis in our meetings, than anything I said here and I’ve had far harsher things said in peer review as well.
As I mentioned earlier and Tim Lambert also indicated in no way are the climate skeptics being denied their right to talk, in fact the evidence indicates that despite their lack of ‘elitism’, they are actually doing very well in terms of being able to present their case to the public.
The fact that you take a fairly polite comment as a vitriolic attack perplexes me. People who make public statements should expect criticism and sometimes there will be heavy criticism, this happens in science, the law, politics, the humanities, the arts, in fact all areas of human endeavour.
If you want to question ‘settled’ science and you are not a scientist in the relevant field, then yes, expect heavy criticism from the field, and if you don’t like it, then make sure you understand the science well, unlike Monckton and his ilk.
Science in particular has a specific well-accepted method of questioning what has been ‘settled’ LE mentions two famous incidents where this happens (Wegener and Marshall & Warren). Were either of these vindicated by them posting on blogs or writing op-eds or hacking into the emails of their opponents? No in both cases, they were vindicated by doing the hard yards of research themselves (for Marshall & Warren) or by their supporters (for Wegener), despite the fact that they were considered wrong by the consensus. When Monckton and his ilk go and do some actual research, I’ll be a lot more prepared to take them seriously. It’s why I have a lot more time for Richard Lindzen.
SL:
Are you sure the distinction you are drawing between different types of injunctions isn’t the distinction between interim and final injuctions, rather than between prohibitory and mandatory ones?
Just a thought and probably doesn’t make any difference to your argument other than its gravitas or auctoritas.
No, Martin, you were not rude, and for that I thank you. I also have far more time for someone like Lindzen than someone like Monckton. I don’t have much time for the “celebrity” advocates of either side (eg, Gore, Monckton).
I have been thinking about some of the comments over at LP about how this post was “unfocused”. This criticism is valid. What I was trying to do with this post was to explore why I thought the various people in the audience were skeptical, and why they felt worried. So it meanders a bit.
My personal worry is with the implementation of policy. I am not a scientist and I recognise that I’m not qualified as such. The main thing that worries me about the science is not the science itself, it’s the tenor of the debate. It’s so polarised. It seems to have become politicised in an ugly way. Maybe it’s inevitable in academia. In my own field, I see certain people’s viewpoints shouted down because they’re not mainstream or popular in various camps. I don’t like that, regardless of whether I agree with someone or disagree with them. Would someone seeking to advance an alternative argument in climate change be considered? Martin, it sounds like you’d give Lindzen at least the time of day, so that heartens me.
I also hate it when people go around saying, “It’s definitely happening”. No, all one can say is that the preponderance of evidence as we know it indicates that it’s happening. That’s all one can ever say in science.
So: to clarify – I would not argue that we should sit back and do nothing. But as I said above, I’m not convinced that an ETS is the way to go, and I’d rather resources go to developing alternative technology. Nor would I suggest ignoring the IPCC or mainstream scientists. That would be arrogant and foolish…and great harm might come as a result. A conviction that one’s position is the only righteous one can do great harm.
I think we should think really carefully about what we do and not act hastily, however. I also think that in matters of public policy in particular, it’s really important to listen to different voices in society, and not shout down people who may have legitimate concerns about the social and economic ramifications of any measures.
Marks:
Yes, I think you’re right. I think there are some people who really like ganging up on someone who thinks differently, on any side.
Identifying yourself as a progressive puts you squarely in the sights of TS Eliot, I fear. Your puzzlement about the apparent [I would suggest, quite real] lack of real-world empathy and concern for the lower end of the financial security axis indicates to me that you may well share the #1 failure and weakness that we conservatives object to: your concern for the “underdog” is theoretical and, in practice, manipulative — used as a ‘moral sword’ to denigrate all opposition as selfish and uncaring, while in practice the progressive labours hard to consolidate the power of his/her elite over society. The claim and presumption is that having society guide by such morally superior beings as themselves will necessarily result in ‘equality’ and uplift.
We say, on what evidence? And point to this logical problem:
“If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.” Ludwig von Mises – Italian Economist 1881 – 1973
Climate change is so readily adaptable to this thrust that it is flat-out suicidal to take anything but incontrovertible evidence to heart on the subject. The claim that CO2 is a “magic thermometer” by which mankind now controls the climate is an extraordinary claim, and hence would require extraordinary evidence. That 90% confidence of the IPCC boys doesn’t cut it. Did you know, by the way, that Jones has explained that this number represents the opinion of the experts like himself, and has no numerical basis? That 10% uncertainty, BTW, even if real would be about 1 or 2 orders of magnitude too high for confidence in the science.
My position on your chart is lower right corner. I have 2 college degrees and an IQ in the top 0.1% of the general population. (Just to defuse any incipient stereotyping.) I am WAY better educated and smarter than Al Gore, but didn’t have his family connections to ride to fame and fortune, nor his arrogance and megalomania.
Edit notes: two errata:
“having society guided”
“magic thermostat”
(It’s WAY past my bedtime, I fear.)
Recommend implementing Preview and/or Edit Window of a few minutes.
#111, Miss Candy;
You might want to educate yourself on the ‘Gravity’ bit.
Personally, I think the warming trend is pure natural rebound from the last Ice Age, most recently the Little Ice Age. Warmist graphs etc. attempting to isolate a few decades to engender fear are demonstrable nonsense.
But mainly, I welcome warming. If only we could in fact keep it going and fend off the overdue end of the ‘interglacial warm period’!! Check out the Medieval, Roman, and Holocene Optimum warm eras. They were boom times for humanity and the vast majority of species. Cold is what you should fear. Unfortunately, the CO2 “magic thermostat” is purely imaginary.
So the Gravity of warming is actually zero, or negative.
LE,
Which climate scientist said the science was “settled’? There’s an idea around that some climate scientist said somewhere that the entire science of climate change was settled.
It’s a myth.
Bits are pretty well understood, bits are a bit rough, and bits are a complete mystery.
And any reputable writings on the subject will tell you exactly that.
People will say things like “the greenhouse effect definitely exists”, “the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is definitely man made” and “additional CO2 will definitely make the world somewhat warmer” – and to argue against these propositions is just asinine.
They start using words like “most probably” and “most likely” to indicate a central estimate of the warming. Here you need to look not only at the central estimate but also the error estimate. There’s a of model uncertainty in the error estimates and it’s hard to quantify these errors.
But the existence of model uncertainty often gets turned into more critiques which are just daft – e.g. “because it’s impossible to predict the weather in 2 weeks it must be impossible to predict the climate for years”.
And then we get the statements about which there’s very weak confidence – e.g. regional predictions.
Just because the science is not settled does not imply that every skepical arguement deserves careful consideration. Some arguments are just daft.
And this I think is the problem with the rhetoric – when you look at the arguments of skeptics you see reasonable statements, like “we need to weigh up costs and benefits” or “regional modelling is pretty low quality and we need that to work out costs and benefits” mixed up with pretty poor and just stupid arguments, like “it’s not clear that CO2 is man-made”, “a system in which it’s impossible to precisely model short term phenomena must also have the property that in the system it’s impossible to broadly model long term phenomena” or “all the recent warming could be from the urban heat island effect”.
> If somebody is making a very silly argument, then it’s pretty hard to respond to it *without* it looking like you’re talking down to them.
That’s for sure. Remember those silly voodoo scientists who advanced the silly notion that the Himalayan glaciers might not vanish in a quarter century?
My God! How could you blame Pachauri for talking down to such pathetic silliness? Poor guy, having to deal with such primitive notions of “science”.
Financial models suffer the same problems as meteorolgical models or climate models. It is the unknown feedback that makes them all fail in predictive mode over their relevant individucal time scales of relevance:
- Weather models fail predictively within days.
- Financial models fail within months or years.
- Climate models fail within years of decades
All of these statements are true, with the only difference being that you can more easily pretend that you model isn’t failing predicitvely if you have a decade or two up your sleeve. And even then you can simply state that “your models are better now”.
If you increase the CO2 concentration of a box in a laboratory and subject it to EM radiation it will warm. That is not in question. It is the massive scale of interaction and feedback at a world scale that means you can’t simply scale up the “physics that has been known for centuries”.
Interesting that someone cited financial models. These tend to be base, bottom up, on Brownian motion, the same class of physics employed in weather and climate models.
The only
“Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
The differentiation between financial models and climate models on the grounds that the latter is based on “the laws of physics” is disingenuous. The real difference is that financial models are modeling agents who can respond to the model (whether directly or via reactions to the actions the models lead to).
The “based on physics” does not work because our knowledge of fluid dynamics in the climate is not nearly as strong as our understanding of basic physics. In particular, the issue of feedbacks in the atmosphere is still very open.
In either case, models only reflect the premises built into them. They are ways of testing your premises and measurements, nothing more.
Martin, I have re-read your post and I agree that my response was wrong. I apologise.
I have just had to let half a dozen people out of the spammer, with the result that I fear this thread has now become somewhat incoherent (not to mention very long). Sorry about that.
DEM and I took ourselves off to see a Neil Marshall film (the brainless but entertaining Centurion; good but not Dog Soldiers, btw) and I have a feeling LE is attending to a couple of small children.
Play nice, please.
Patrick Caldon – no climate scientist said the science was settled – and Professor Schneider certainly didn’t (if you look up at the body of the post above). It’s the general populace and the press who say that it’s settled (as if that’s a lay down mazere, we can all go home now). As Prof Schneider said in the show, no climate scientist would say that – it would mean their work would be over, no more interesting research, no more grants etc!
SL, I like your arguments on injunctions. I think our approach to the issue is similar, although I have nowhere near the sophisticated grasp of equity that you clearly do.
However, I don’t believe I contradicted myself – I was applying legal principles, but criticising legal practices as models for pursuing any debate in this area (ie adversarialism).
LE I find your point about polarisation interesting. I see some polarity in the climate change activists that I hang around with in order to work in the area, I do. But in the general population I see very nuanced consideration of the issues, and no such polarisation. In fact, thoughts on the issue are characterised by doubt and uncertainty, as well as real (and I believe sell-founded) fear of the potential consequences of climate change.
I maintain my support for Julia Gillard’s approach to climate change for this very reason. It diverts the polarisation and looks for an evidence-based, bipartisan middle ground. If climate change is a real threat, this approach might be the best chance we’ve got of democratising the issue without polarising it. That’s why I think Abbott’s “what is the parliament for?” point was easy to make but wrong. If he had acted in a consensus-building way on the issue he might have had a leg to stand on.
On haste: there’s a difference between acting hastily and responding urgently.
BrianH@141 – that’s far too simplistic an argument for somebody who is apparently intelligent. The issue isn’t warm/cool. The issue is rapid and chaotic change that the earth and its inhabitants simply cannot keep up with. If the issue was warming I’d move to Tassie and be done with it.
Financial models suffer the same problems as meteorolgical models or climate models.
Yeah there was a post that said the same thing on this blog.
It’s interesting how you get a mind that can raise their eyes to heaven at computer generated climate forecasts but have complete confidence in the same technology for the same sort of unpredictable chaos and vice versa.
LE, Yours is an honest post of enquiry, so I’m sorry it hasn’t been accepted by all in that light.
I’m a climate scientist working on the relationship between science and risk and how that relates to policy. Will be watching Insight tonight, though with Steve Schneider’s death so recent, it won’t be a comfortable experience.
You state that you’re agnostic as to the science but concerned about the risks of climate policy on the poor. Climate policy as communicated by the media is very skewed – there is actually a rich dynamic globally between poverty, development and climate change. It isn’t that well understood or communicated in the public debate on climate policy in the western media. It’s reduced to a pro-anti dialectic reported pretty much like the last election, with the medja reporting the sallies from warriors on either side. Climate change has been overwhelmingly communicated as an environmental risk with mitigation policy requiring binding international commitments to avoid dangerous climate change. Neither the risk nor the policy have to be looked at in that way.
The following is based on some of my own work and I’m interested as to whether people from a range of viewpoints see it as helpful or not.
When risks are complex, the science-risk interface can be divided into three parts instead of a linear process that goes from science to risk analysis to risk management. When the values around framing the risk are contested, one of the first steps is to attack or defend the science contributing to that risk depending on one’s viewpoint. This is neither useful or helpful.
The first part is the science, which is supposed to be value neutral (but it is neither perceived or practised as such, however does have claims to objectivity). When science is communicated – salience, legitimacy and authority all have an impact on how it is received.
The second part asks what is at risk? Risk analysis assesses the likelihood of reaching a given level of harm. For climate change this is often assessed at different levels of warming: 1°C, 2°C, 3°C and so on. The environmental risks are most well known but the social risks point to the poor being hardest hit. The links between environment and development have become central to assessment and policy. There was a chapter devoted to it in the last IPCC report and it will be more strongly represented next time.
The third part looks at policy measures – both mitigation and adaptation. Your primary concern is that if climate policy is developed to mitigate climate change as an environmental problem, it will be socially regressive. This issue is written into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and was the less obvious part of the Kyoto Protocol. Globally, we have an adaptation fund and a least developed countries fund – international transfer of funds to better run these programs was agreed to at Copenhagen. What failed were the binding target commitments for developing countries insisted on by the developed countries. About half of what was needed to avoid committing Earth to a roughly 50/50 chance of avoiding 2°C warming was agreed to. My view is that a learning by doing approach with binding targets for developed countries and voluntary targets for developing countries is sufficient. Working out what is progressive and what is regressive before developing blanket policy seems like a good idea. According to the planning literature, this is also a better way to do complex policy than top-down command and control.
In Australia, as a developed country, we have to make sure that policy isn’t socially regressive while being effective. The CPRS, as complex and badly communicated as it was did have compensation for low and middle income households, where small price rises can have a serious marginal effect. Government propaganda here: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/government/initiatives/cprs/who-affected/households.aspx By all means, be sceptical, because I think that climate policy is so complex, that it needs to be rigorously tested. A tax, rather than a market mechanism, with appropriate compensation would probably give less chance of unintended consequences.
As to the science-calculated risk and science-perceived risk relationship this, to me, is central to your enquiry (and an area that I personally feel is really interesting).
You ask why part of the left has taken specific policies on uncritically. One reason might be that the socially constructed and “scientifically rational” pathways combine. The science says climate change causes these risks, we value the systems at risk very highly so will agree to policy that removes that risk. Scientists also like rational policy because that’s the way they think. The policy literature and experience say that doesn’t work, rationality is not a good test for assessing what “good” policy is.
On the other hand, there are a whole lot of people who fear loss from climate policy. Rationally, it shouldn’t make any difference to the science, which is policy neutral, but does make a difference to how the science is perceived. Part of the perceived risk from climate policy is because it is unfamiliar, and unfamiliar risks are rated much more highly than familiar risks. This is one reason why learning by doing – taking small steps (hastening slowly) – might be better than looking for one-shot binding targets. The fear from the pro-climate lobby is that this will be insufficient in the long run, but change can potentially be very swift.
On the other hand, science is being attacked by those who wish to negate the risk. A few right wing libertarians have come out and accepted the science publicly. The responses are ferocious and after reading those responses a dousing in antiseptic is in order. Puts LP in the shade. The left though tends to accept science (e.g., genetic manipulation, nuclear, though not so much some medical science) and debate the risk. Elements of the right in recent years are directly attacking well-founded science (e.g., evolution, climate change) to negate the risk.
For this reason, I think it’s good to separate scepticism of science and scepticism of policy because one is more about evidence and the other more about values. However, overwhelmingly people tend not to do this. You mention Pearson’s 2×2 matrix – you may be interested in some work on cultural theory and risk in the US that examines scientific beliefs within a similar framework and can be found here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=1017189
I’m happy to discuss scepticism, risk, science and policy further and can be tracked down at Vic Uni. My interest is in how people frame the debate so your post gave food for thought. Didn’t participate in the LP thread (which is where I found it) because of the direction that discussion took.
Roger, thank you so much.
As I said above, I chatted with Professor Schneider after the show, and I respected him. I am very sorry he passed away.
I think my scepticism is more about values than it is about the science. I’m not really qualified to question the science. I’m not a scientist, although I’m married to one, and my parents are both scientists. I was brought up to be objective and fair, looking at unexpected results with an open mind.
If I had any criticism of the science, it would not be of the science itself, it would be of the apparent tribalism in the scientific community which I thought was evident from the Climategate e-mails.
In my own field of study, there are also tribal lines (Equity vs. Restitution). At times, the debates between the two are very uncivil, and there have been instances where people accuse people on the other side of being like fascists or Nazis. I hate that. I hate dogmatism. I probably belong more in the Restitution box, but I have friends whom I respect who are more in the Equity box, and I would never, ever be rude to them or suggest that they are fascists. Nor would they do that to me, I hope. I find that I learn a good deal from reading their papers with an open mind, and that often they have some very valid points which make my own arguments better. That is part of the reason why I blog with women whose politics differs from my own too: I really value different inputs.
Miss Candy, because you are a reasonable, decent person who is willing to look at the other side, I remember that when we first talked about this in detail, you were surprised that people would be unpleasant if one expressed doubts about climate change in left circles.
Did you have a look at the LP post Roger Merkel wrote, and the responses to it? I have no doubt that if one expressed support of climate change at a site which was anti-climate change the reaction would be equally angry and dogmatic. It shows why I think Gillard’s idea is problematic. How are we going to have a proper public debate if there’s that kind of dogmatic unforgiving attitude floating around?
This really has been one of the best threads on climate change that I have read. (I particularly liked Roger Jones’ contribution.)
LE, I don’t think tribalism can ever be overcome entirely but mainatining a spirit of open enqiury can be difficult sometimes.
As an insider, I can give the background to some of what was said in climate so-called Climategate emails – it’s not as bad as it might seem. The keeping papers out of the IPCC reference was to an error-riddled paper published in Climate Research that should never has passed review. It was published due to bias in the editorial process and the Editor-in-Chief and four Associate Editors resigned as a result. Poor papers tend not to be assesed by the IPCC in any case – there just isn’t room to assess literature that’s not relevant. The “trick” referred to was a legitimate “clever” thing to do – not a deception. I don’t think the hockey-stick stuff is all that important scientifically in any case – it has become a bete noir for a group who want to discount late 20th century warming as anything exceptional. The supposed non-release of climate data was because some of it was being used under licence, so McIntyre was instructed to gather it from countries of origin, where the licences originated. He didn’t accept that and began to send FOI requests to the Climate Reseach Unit (CRU) which they were ill-equipped to deal with. By mid 2009, he had a request on his blog for people to send FOI requests to CRU for data from five countries each selected at random. This amounts to a denial of service attack. CRU has always passed data on to what they called “bona fide researchers” – this is now changing to a more open process. McIntyre had also asked Keith Briffa for tree ring data he already held, which had been collected by a third party. The CRU people had never struck this kind of behaviour before – it was taking them away from their everyday research, they’d been doing this on a shoe-string for years and what you see in the emails is frustration at that.
So you have a community with a high degree of connectedness that passed on data with three levels of security – open source data, proprietary data owned by countries held under licence, and data collected by individuals where that was not passed onto third parties without contacting the originator. Into this you have a guy who is very brusque, demands things so he can check them, but isn’t doing any research – he’s just looking for errors. The emails are some of the fallout from this.
The reason the science did not need to be checked in the enquiries into Climategate is because there are similar data sets developed independently that yield similar results. I have confidence those results because in the 1990s I analysed historical data in southern Australia so am familar with the techniques. There are now one or two amateur efforts up to reproduce the data – they are also confirming the global temp record as reproducible. Technical protocols are developed by the World Met Organisation on an ongoing basis. If it was dubious, it would have been picked up on a long time ago. So the process and the results are two different things.
There’s no doubt the campaign to discredit climate science, helped by several errors and perceptions around the stolen emails dented the science.
It was really poorly handled by the science community who were unprepared for that type of campaign. This includes the IPCC, which is pretty quiet between reports. A recent review has recommended changes to better allow for mistakes made, to improve responsiveness to new issues and mprove communication.
The emails said some stupid things, which Phil Jones apologised for but there was no organised campaign of deception – it was frustration at being kept away from their work. The University of East Anglia was criticised for not giving them more support under the EoI process.
The lesson for scientists is to keep both their public and private communication respectful. People do get tribal on occasion but I didn’t think it affected the science in this case. Climate science is actually one of the most open areas of scientific enquiry because of it’s international focus (ecology is another).
According to recent polls about the issue in the US, trust in science dropped by about 15% after the release of the CRU emails, the Himalayan glacier melt error and Copenhagen, but has since recovered (as of June this year). Even in the US, public opinion is sitting at about 75% confidence in the science – it seems that many people trust the science even if they don’t always agree with its conclusions.
Lorenzo, I second that – I really, really like Roger Jones’ contributions. Sensible and fair.
P.S. Roger, I’m sorry your posts are taking so long to come through. Akismet keeps putting you in the spam bin. Perhaps Akismet does not want civil discussion – it is an evil plug in.
Roger – Can I just ask how in general this shitfight has effected your work?
Can I third LE and Lorenzo on Roger’s contribution? The first comment (which shows, among other things, a deep awareness of the ‘planning fallacy’ that Hayek spent his life researching) is a reminder that (a) public policy is hard and (b) even so, it is still possible to do it properly. I especially like this:
Yeah for enthusiasts of things organic the Greens have a lot of trouble with organic concepts of economics.
Allow me to correct one point of Roger Jones: Phil Jones referred to two papers he ‘wanted to keep out’. One of those two, in Climate Research, was indeed riddled with errors. However, it was not that paper that caused so many Editors to step out (but it was the same Associate Editor who handled that infamous paper…). In case anyone is interested: Phil Jones referred to Michaels&McKitrick, while Roger refers to Soon&Baliunas.
LE, You are looking for reasons, why “believers” (I find that term offensive, as it implies to accept something without looking into the hard evidence) are often hostile in the debate.
Let me give you a few examples.
Lord Monckton is a prominent skeptic, giving highly publicized speeches (lauded by the skeptics-in-name-only ) on the subject of climate change. Yet there is that devastating take-down of his presentation by Professor Abraham, where he does not berate Monckton, but simply demonstrates where and why Monckton gets things wrong.
http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/
None of that seems to phase skeptics-in-name-only. Or more simply, have a look here on how Monckton misrepresents what the IPCC actually says in order to make his point. Compare his depiction of an IPCC scenario to what the scenario actually is.
http://bluegrue.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/ipcc-a2-co2-scenario-a-la-monckton/
This is the elite of the skeptics.
Or let’s see Professor Ian Plimer, I’m to understand that he as well gave a tour and published a book on the subject.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php
see also my comment #25 over there. Like my example for Monckton, this isn’t even at the level of science, it’s simply incompetence or deliberate distortion of data. Your run-of-the-mill-skeptic-in-name-only will ignore this and point to all the other points Plimer is raising in a Gish gallop.
This is why the debate is so toxic. Instead of talking about whether we want to tackle the problem of leave it be, and if we want to tackle it how, anti-science is spread accompanied with a liberal serving of character attacks on leading scientists in the field.
My position is pretty harsh: If you want to “debate” the science, you need to educate yourself to a level that you are able to actually debate the science. Otherwise all you can do is talk about science as it is presented to you. The actual science debates are done in the presentations and small group discussion at scientific conferences, visits to institutions, published papers and e-mails. If you want to take part in those, pay the price and take the years it takes to get the necessary level of education and work in that field.
And before you ask, I’m squarely in the “talk about” camp. I consider myself not qualified to debate climate science, despite being a physicist. I can spot a lot of nonsense that skeptics-in-name-only throw at me, but I am not at a level of understanding, where I could contribute to the advancement of climate science.
@Martin,
you raise very good and valid points.
This issue is very often discussed in blogs worldwide. There are many people (mostly ordinary people) who want to react on climate changes. Everyone can see that there are millions people who were personally affected by some sudden weather changes and they suffer more than if they had to pay more for bills of electricity or fuel…
Everything that is made by human can harm nature but we can not stop the evolution. So what to do now? We can hardly predict what can mitigate the human’s impact on nature. But we should definitely try to start to do small steps (to separate the waste) and loudly call on politicians to take higher responsibility for their decisions about our (and our children) future…
Oh Please Roger, stop it with the nothing to see here folks routine as we travel past a train wreck.
1. The climate emails fiasco showed total perversion of the peer review process to the point where anything coming from that side of science these days can’t be trusted.
2. The refusal to comply with freedom of information requests is a serious breach.
3. The IPCC allowed NGO’s to put their bit in, such as the end of the Himalaya ice disappearing in 20 years coming from an environmental magazine
4. The head of the IPCC, the soft porn author, is a total and complete fraud.
Stop it the freaking excuses. If you think there’s nothing wrong you need to get some fresh air.
I think there’s a problem with too much smoke billowing and eventually causing us long-term problems. However unlike you I don’t make excuses for cheats and frauds that either needs to be fired sent to jail or tarred and feathered in other ways.
McIntyre had also asked Keith Briffa for tree ring data he already held, which had been collected by a third party. The CRU people had never struck this kind of behaviour before – it was taking them away from their everyday research, they’d been doing this on a shoe-string for years and what you see in the emails is frustration at that.
Oh please. they could easily have placed ALL their data, not just selectively on a website with all the background information such as codes readily accessible.
On the other hand, science is being attacked by those who wish to negate the risk.
That’s not true. There are people that accept the science and don’t accept the solutions. There are also other that accept the science but dispute the level of seriousness which is also where the tire meets the road in the scientific community and you neglected to mention that. The rate of change is nowhere near established.
A few right wing libertarians have come out and accepted the science publicly. The responses are ferocious and after reading those responses a dousing in antiseptic is in order. Puts LP in the shade.
Like who? Name them. Reason the Libertarian journal par excellence had it science writer come out and argue that he believed the science of climate change and I can’t recall ANY ferocious beat up against him.
The left though tends to accept science (e.g., genetic manipulation, nuclear, though not so much some medical science) and debate the risk.
Please. The left has had a grubby history relating to science going back the the era of the modern left which was the French Revolution. It’s understanding how best we understand how we organize our selves has been shall we say less than stellar. Perhaps you can explain the anti-science displays about Nuclear energy and that the Greens are actually trying to prevent the use of nuclear medicine in this country. What a grubby argument you’re putting up. Remind me from which end of the political spectrum did Lysenko science appear from?
Most important science is done in private firms too. Iphones, Ipad to give the most recent examples. Or how about the catalectic converter or fuel injection?
Elements of the right in recent years are directly attacking well-founded science (e.g., evolution, climate change) to negate the risk.
Okay, name the prominent right wing leader in the world that believes in a 6,000 year earth? This is just made up bullshit from the left. Jews don’t believe in evolution and yet the hold the most Nobels of any group in the world.
Believing in a 6,000-year earth doesn’t stop you from doing your job if you worked in an engineering firm for instance.
This is just leftwing jive made to sound reasonable.
Here’s one for you. The prime concern we have as human beings is human well being.
Sterns report said we need to lop off around 1% of annual global GDP for AGW if it’s unmolested out to 2100.
If we take annual global GDP is around real $65 trillion and the expected growth rate this century could be as high as 4% we would end up with an unmolested GDP of 2,217 trillion in 90 years.
If we take Stern’s advice that 1% difference over oceans of time is really big. In fact it’s huge. It will mean that instead of seeing that sort of growth in GDP we’d see $900 trillion. That’s a huge lick to give up.
Richard Tol has done great work in the area and he’s only a little less negative than I am.
My point is that there actually another option which is to do nothing and watch even if you believe it is happening or at least mitigate at a very low cost in order to ensure the growth rate compounds at a higher rate. That means nuclear energy. Period.
I want to clarify and add a little to the lat part.
Stern suggested that if we didn’t act on climate change we’d see Global GDP 5% less than if there was no warming.
And he advocated 1% cost of annual GDP to be used to mitigate.
So lets do the numbers again.
Unmolested GDP in 2100 with AGW would be US$2,217 Trillion less 5% and would = US$2106 trillion.
If we take Sterns advice GDP molested for AGW would be $US 929 trillion.
So the real cost of mitigation would be higher than the cost of not acting by US$1,177 trillion.
So where’s the case for mitigation rather than waiting?
Where are you getting this $50/month figure? I don’t know about Australia, but the proposed climate legislation in the USA (including a carbon cap and trade system) would have cost about $3 per person per month, according to every independent economic analysis (CBO, EIA, EPA, Peterson Institute).
My position is that science and policy must be kept distinct, and that scientists need to understand that what works in science may not work in public policy, which is Roger’s point above (I’ve quoted the relevant par in my last comment). I am a policy wonk with some influence in a UK political party; anyone presenting with bluegrue’s attitude will be shown the door, even if he is right, for the simple reason that political parties, governments, civil servants and lawyers have to value many different constituencies. Robert Merkel’s cavalier attitude to feminism (above), for example, is a serious black mark against his advocacy for climate change mitigation, not because the two issues are intimately linked (they probably aren’t, although that said, much of the modern success of women is dependent on industrialisation and labour-saving devices) but because it evinces an inability to appreciate that governments govern for all of us; if they don’t, they are voted out.
Disrespecting, deriding or dening the legitimate concerns of your constituents leads to political irrelevance quick smart. I sometimes get the impression that some people in this debate would enjoy a return to the 18th century, where only certain people could vote.
They’d restrict the franchise to a different class of voters, but the effect would be the same.
And another thing: Once again I’ve had to let a large number of people out of the spammer, which risks reducing the thread to incoherence. We are doing the best we can, but even allowing for the fact that we straddle different time zones, we still miss people sometimes.
And thank goodness it’s the vac.
I know this thread has been banging on for a while.
Coming back I find a rather interesting idea from scepticalawyer proposing that science and policy are kept separate. I would have thought science informs policy, and if not, why not? Gunns old growth logging and its proposed pulp mill are an example of what I’m getting at- if the science and policy are not compatible, the science goes?
Guilty as charged. I hope I would keep myself at bay in a setting like that. LE wanted to know, why people on the AGW side react so fiercly and I wanted to give a clear answer. I fully agree, that the science and the policy ought to be kept separate.
I’d like to highlight another part of Roger Jones excellent comments and ask for advise:
Now, the science of current climate change, as well as the attribution to mankind, is being attacked, rather than the proposed policies. For the sake of the argument, assume that everything Roger said about the attacks is true, that the findings of the IPCC are correct, that the people attacking the science either don’t know better or are being mislead and that a vocal, influential minority is deliberately distorting the science. Assume that we need to stop CO2 emission from fossil fuels to limit both the warming/change of the climate and the pH-change of the oceans; and fast. What would a successful policy look like? I know I’m asking miracles, but pointers are welcome.
The other thing that touched me was the concern for the poor, should climate mitigation or other forms of environmental salvage be implemented. Some might have taken this as some form of subtle arm twisting, but I am confident this was not the meaning of such commentary. My solution, less middle class and corporate welfare and if that doesn’t work, up tax compliance for the rich.
They don’t really need exotic sports cars and flash mansions for mere survival. Am on a db pension and if I can manage on that, surely a cake walk for the wealthy who are so much brighter than I. Not that the wealthy would need reminding that to pay their dues might help alleviate ecological degradation and ease global poverty both, since its the poor, apparently, who will be stung for cleanup costs.
We know rich people on the whole would rather die than have the poor suffer for them, for their sins. And the rest of us would really love our planet (it is our world, also) back, since we live here, too.
ok, ok.
Above means you (both) will resent me, which is a shame, since you seem like civilised, intelligent people apart from the article, which I’d prefer to regard as something from the”rush of blood” category. Like yourselves, I had to pluck up courage to write this, knowing how unpopular science and ecology are in some quarters.
It’s your kids that will grow up in the world of the future, not mine..
JC wrote:
“Jews don’t believe in evolution.”
Hah. *Which* Jews don’t ‘believe in’ evolution? Ultra-Orthodox? Orthodox? Conservative? Reform? The Jews on this rather incomplete list?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_American_biologists_and_physicians
Please specify. It’s ignorant of you to lump them all together. Would you write that Christians don’t ‘believe in’ evolution because *some* fundamental sects reject it?
As for right-wing leaders who are *young earth creationists* — I see what you’re doing there — YEC is just one, the certainly most ignorant, species of evolution ‘skepticism’. And you vaguely demand we come up with a ‘right-wing leader’. By what definition? Would the President of Iran count? Or do you mean only American politicians?
If the latter, does it count if a right-nik refuses to say how old they think the earth is, while speaking to an audience of YECs? Or is that just ‘good politics’?
http://barefootandprogressive.blogspot.com/2010/06/rand-paul-refuses-to-say-how-old-earth.html
How about right-wing presidential hopefuls supporting the teaching of creationism in public schools alongside reality-based science, does that count?
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32848_Ask_Bobby_Jindal_About_His_Creationism
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32863_The_Top_3_GOP_Governors-_All_Creationists
Certainly, having a scientist quote all these facts and figures didn’t change my position. I am a lay person, not a scientist. I can’t make any effective judgments about the science behind Professor Schneider’s figures and projections. I don’t have the scientific or the statistical capacity to judge the various accounts as to what is going to happen with our climate. I don’t know who is right or wrong about the ‘hockey stick graph‘. I accord all due respect to Professor Schneider for coming and talking to us, and respect him for treating us respectfully, but his facts and figures didn’t change my mind.
If I’m not a scientist, why am I a sceptic, then? Well, there are two reasons why I’m sceptical. First, I believe that a level of scepticism is essential to proper, rigorous scientific method, and thus people ought to maintain scepticism about any scientific hypotheses. Einstein himself said, ‘No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.’ A hypothesis is strengthened by the failure of ardent attempts to disprove it. And I don’t really see the kind of mentality in climate change which allows for someone to attempt to disprove them.
For a lawyer, I would have hoped for a more logical argument. You readily admit you do not understand the science, and cannot, but then reserve the right to be sceptical. If you are going to be sceptical, you have to do the hard yards and evaluate the evidence. If you are honest with yourself, you should admit to wanting to be sceptical, but not capapble of it. Since you are not really being sceptical, you should adopt the rational position of deferring to the experts.
As a comic on radio once said, if you want some entertainment, go and watch someone represent themselves in court.
Snide, I would hope that any person I represented in court would question my advice and ask me lots of questions if they were worried or concerned. I wouldn’t expect them to sit back and just “defer to the expert”. I’m not that arrogant.
If you represent someone, you should listen to them. In fact, that’s a common complaint about lawyers – that they just expect the client to defer to their expertise and that they don’t listen. Personally I abhor that kind of approach. Being heard and feeling like you have been listened to is very important.
A point I was trying to make in the post is that an expert looks more expert and will be regarded as a lot more trustworthy if he or she can deal with questioning. Look how well Roger comes across above, or how well Professor Schneider came across.
I think those who seek to close down any debate are making a grave mistake which fuels conspiracy theories.
Most “skeptics” agree with the science. I do not count people who do not so much as bother to read the literature as being skeptical.
True skeptics who do the sort of intellectual heavy lifting needed to defend a contrarian position are free to publish it in journals. That is the way science is done. Not by vulgar “debate”.
Your article would seem to imply that the journals are closed. Nonsense. There’s no evidence of that at all. It appears instead that the contrarians have no argument–save to Make Stuff Up and through lies and cute-sounding fallacies (which a scientifically literate person could only argue if being deliberately deceitful) convince people incapable of judging science that the people who actually do have scientifically sound positions are wrong.
So is it more import to ‘look like’ an expert in front of highly inexpert questioners, or to actually *be* one?
Not all scientists are good a public speaking or writing for nonscientists. Scientific expertise is acknowledged based on their research success. Nor btw are great communicators of science necessarily the ones who do the best research. The combination is pretty rare, actually. And not just in science, of course. Do you think Immanuel Kant was as good at working an audience as Richard Feynman?
Some scientific debates are ‘closed’ because the evidence on one side is simply too overwhelming to waste time keeping them ‘open’. That’s not ‘censorship’, it’s sensible time/funding management. Even such a ‘closing’ still provisional, though; strong NEW evidence or analysis brought forth to re-open a debate, will re-open it. Not zombie arguments (‘skeptic’ talking points that have been debunked over and over).
Bennett, you can be disdainful all you like, but I find the comment of Roger @ 156 about the journal process and the academic “climate” far more convincing and honest than your comment. He took my concern as legitimate, and explained why it was not so from his point of view as a climate scientist. I really, really respect that. You’re just beating your chest. If you keep up that attitude you’ll create plenty more sceptics who are just turned off by your arrogance and readiness to call people who disagree with you disingenous. Is that what you want?
And yes, I DO think climate change scientists have to engage in debate and dialogue, because very important policy questions in our society are being decided as a result of the science, as Roger recognises, and Professor Schneider recognised.
The notion that the toxicity of the debate is all the sceptic’s fault is nonsense. As I noted in my first comment above, I have seen all the same de-legitimising dissent tactics before and it was from progressivist critics of economic reform and advocates of (disastrous) indigenous policy. They really get in the way of good public policy, for reasons I discuss here.
And I am not impressed by “not used to this” claims about the CRU. If you are going to make scientific claims of such extraordinary importance, then one must not only be open about the data, one must be seen to be open about the data. They failed on both, rather miserably. A failure that created many rods for their own back, in giving sceptical views things to focus on.
What does it say about someone who is ‘turned off’ by a factual argument because the *tone* annoys them? They certainly aren’t being *skeptical*.
Steven, I think anyone watching Insight would have been impressed with Prof Schneider’s obvious depth of knowledge and patience. As I said above, I think scientists have to get used to entering into dialogue because important questions of policy are being decided as a result of this. Thus, it’s important to both *be* an expert, and to be seen to be an expert. As Roger said, they were unprepared for this, and not properly supported…but they’d better get used to it.
I do wonder what Feynmann would have thought of climate change science, don’t you?
You missed the whole point of the post – which was the importance of CIVIL discussions on the issue. Do you want to convince people or do you want to beat your chest?
And yes, from my point of view as a professional arguer, tone is EXCEPTIONALLY important. If you want to convince people, you have to be very, very careful with your tone. I ask again – do you want to convince people? Or do you just want to parade about saying how clever you are and how stupid other people are?
Immanuel Kant was (a) not a scientist and (b) spent a great of his time complaining about masturbation and the morality thereof. If you’re to be nasty you’d write him off on the basis that he was egregiously ignoring practical applications of his work.
In this debate, you either win the empirical argument or we policy wonks will assign you to the outer darkness.
Writing people off as vulgar is the same as assaying that women and working men should not have the vote (believe me, I’ve seen those arguments before, as has anyone with any knowledge of political history). If you need those sort of elitist arguments to make your case, I would rather consign you, your science and everything you stand for to the outer darkness, and I don’t care how right you are.
Platonic Guardians. Do not want.
And as Roger understands, science and policy are not the same thing.
And, no, I’m not an expert in science, but I do think very hard about how to persuade people (that’s what a lawyer’s job is). The trick is to make it easy for people to see your point of view. Putting people down and sneering at them makes it hard for them to see your point of view. It obfuscates the legitimate points you may have, and gets people angry. If people are angry and hurt, they are less likely to be reasonable, and more likely to reject your arguments out of hand.
It’s one of the reasons I don’t much like the writings of Germaine Greer, for example (too acid for me).
Apart from the intermittant rants by characters on the ends of the spectrum of views on this issue, this has been one of the better discussions on climate change online for a while. I agree that it is good to keep the distinction between the science and the policy. However, we need to affirm the use of science in the creation of policy as non-evidence based policy is quite often then ideologically driven, from one direction or another.
As also not-a-scientist I choose to trust those who are and I think the evidence for global warming is more convincing that the non-evidence of a global scientific conspiracy to get grant money, which appears to be a common theme at the extreme end of the discussion.
Thanks LE for opening up the discussion. It was informative and useful.
Absolutely Grendel, policy must by evidence based
Rog – what about scepticism about policy? Do you think that people should be able to suggest that maybe an ETS is not the best way of dealing with the issue, for example?
I’d love to query SL further on186, but for once am at a loss for words, which is probably fortunate.
Legal Eagle’s point about scepticism is fair as far as it goes, but you’d have to give some credibility to global warming before you’d embrace either a cabon tax or carbon crediting. A denialist would probably say, since it ain’t true, full-steam ahead on global warming, deforestation, soil and water degradation, fisheries collapses and so forth.
A sceptic might say, let’s not move out of the cities and into the caves just yet with basket weaving and handlooms gear, but surely would not want to hold back that which could be reaonably done before hand, in the event that it does turn out to be true.
And a sceptic would be charry of both global warming and claims against it and be sceptical of all the different people touting a viewpoint within that field.
Someone mentioned the grants industry on one hand , while others have talked of being sceptical of big business attempts to ameliorate of theimpact of global warming for business reasons-lots of funny motives inevitably colour things further.
How do you respectfully counter mean-spirited, unfounded attacks on the integrity the scientists, like the smear campaign against Prof. Phil Jones? How do you deal with outright deniers like Monckton who poison the mind of the public with lies? How do convince people, who declare that listing facts and reasoning won’t convince them because they don’t understand them, but also declare that they have no intention of bringing themselves up to speed on an important subject they want to decide on. Believe it or not, I’m genuinely willing to help people who want to learn about the subject. However this is very tough going, if people are unable to distinguish between Prof. Schneider’s expertise and Monckton’s bluster and are unwilling to educate themselves.
An example from the transcript, look at Dr. Ian Rivlin. Schneider is answering his question when he is rudely interrupted by Rivlin. He is unable to grasp the simple concept, that if you put in a bucket and a bit of water into a basin, take out a bucket and repeat the process, then you will accumulate a substantial extra amount of water, no matter how small the individual bits are. Instead he invokes a fantasy homeostasis out of thin air. Please help me out. How does one effectively deal with nonsense like that?
LE is not championing the cause of equality at all, she’s just another member of the white, educated, middle class evoking the needs of the poor and disadvantaged,
We on the other hand are white educated middle-class people ignoring the needs of the poor and disadvantaged ’cause, like, that’s soooo 1930s man.
bluegrue, at least Professor Schneider tried. Some people, you’re never going to be able to convince, but I really really respect him for trying. So he did have an impact on me. I didn’t like the hostile tone and closed minds of some of the people, but my post was an effort to consider why they might be that way.
And I am still thinking about what Professor Schneider said. I still haven’t made up my mind. I intend to go off and research the matter further. However, I have also been doing a full time PhD, I am doing full time work, and I have two small toddlers. There is only so much one can do at once!
As I said above, I think scientists have to get used to entering into dialogue because important questions of policy are being decided as a result of this. Thus, it’s important to both *be* an expert, and to be seen to be an expert.
I’m not sure lumping that additional responsibilities onto the scientists. I think there’s a unfilled role here that needs to be considered in its own right, if we’re going to achieve a genuine evidence based democratic process. The scientists have enough work to do, doing the science and communicating the results to the relevant people who are already educated and informed enough to understand it.
The roll of communicating the science and educating the general public to the extent they can reasonably judge the policies on offer is something that seems to be missing from the system as a whole (and this isn’t just an issue on climate change). I think this roll is both far too important and far too extensive to simply be lumped onto the scientists.
A good reference for answers to popular skeptics talking points is John Cook’s
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
I’d also recommend giving Spencer Weart’s The Discovery of Global Warming a try.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
SL, there’s a comment with hopefully helpful links waiting for you in the moderation queue.
Sorry, I meant to say Legal Eagle, but they should be of interest to both of you anyway.
Legal Eagle @ 180 – I think its important to recognise that scientists with communication capabilities of someone like Schneider are the exception, not the rule. He was very impressive in both his patience (some people had obviously gone there prepared with what they thought were “gotcha” questions) and the way he was able translate quite complex concepts to a level appropriate to the questioner. This is a very rare trait – to both be able to do the hard science and communicate it well to any member of the public.
In a way some of the problems have been caused by a lack of funding for science. They should not be forcing scientists who are not good at, or interested in, into public discussions. When I read some of the details about the communications between the scientists and those requesting the data I was left wondering why the scientists didn’t have peons to look after stuff like that.
And we do have people – science communicators – who are both trained and eager to do this sort of thing.
Incidentally I think the problems you see in the way the climate change debate is run is little different than in other areas such as politics, the footy or what is the best operating system. People get very attached to their side and some, often those with the least amount of knowledge, start making outrageous claims which in the end do a lot of damage to the reputation of their own side.
Chris, 190, made a great point in drawing attention to lack of funding for education and media; perhaps a deliberate dumbing down even, to discourage interest in this sort of topic. This has included some heavy handed stuff at CSIRO; roughly the equivalent to what they’ve done to/with public broadcasting.
LE,184 surely a breeze in thepark since women, unlike men, can actually multi-skill?
Thank you, bluegrue. Now that I have handed in the PhD (one week ago today, hurrah!) I have time to read things like that. At least till I get back the corrections…*chews nails*…
What I was trying to say in the post is that the reason why people are perhaps unreasonably sceptical is connected with the policy aspect. It makes them scared. The first woman who spoke on Insight clearly felt very worried about the effects on the economy and the country as a whole, and thus she felt inclined to reject the science as well.
I think people also mistrust what Miss Candy @ 111 called the Malthusian aspect. (She is not a climate change sceptic.) I remember when I read the IPCC report my first reaction was, “Why are the forecasts all so negative?” People also worry about scaremongering. That is why I strongly believe that pressing on people’s fears is not a way to get a message across effectively. But as Professor Schneider said in the program, it seems to be the only message the press is interested in hearing, whatever side you’re on.
Desipis, I think you’re right – there needs to be an in-between role. It’s no good if you’re taken from your research all the time to have to explain yourself to people!
An example from the transcript, look at Dr. Ian Rivlin. Schneider is answering his question when he is rudely interrupted by Rivlin.
I’m not sure that this question was particularly well answers (or particularly well asked either). With reference to the bathtub analogy, I don’t think the question was about the cumulative affects of a small difference in water flow. I think it was a question about how given the small increase in input flow, wouldn’t the increase in pressure from the extra water actually increase the flow through the drain resulting in a slightly different equilibrium rather than a run away accumulation. An example of how this could apply to climate change would be the increased plant growth from extra carbon.
I think Schneider misread the question, and didn’t do his argument any favours by assuming the questioner didn’t understand his answer.
Believe it or not, I’m genuinely willing to help people who want to learn about the subject. However this is very tough going, if people are unable to distinguish between Prof. Schneider’s expertise and Monckton’s bluster and are unwilling to educate themselves. Yes, well, I often have similar thoughts about progressivists and economics.
Prof. Schneider did suffer from having been an enthusiast for anthropogenic global cooling in his enthusiastic youth: he seemed to be searching for anthropogenic climate catastrophe.
That we are (1) in a warming phase seems quite clear. That (2) there is some human element is certainly plausible.That (3) the human element predominates is less established. That (4) the best response to to control emissions, and do it early, rather than mitigation, is very much not established. The insistence that (1) entails (2) to (4) is faith parading as science-based.
I think, Prof. Schneider’s answer was spot on. The question read
There are several problems with the question.
1. Rivlin is comparing mankind annual addition to the atmospheric CO2 to the annual input from natural sources.
2. He ignores, that the CO2 from natural sources is taken up again, whereas about half of the CO2 emitted from fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere and the rest ends up in the oceans.
3. He ignores the accumulation. We have raised the atmospheric CO2 levels by about 30% with regard to pre-industrial levels.
4. He appeals to common sense, rather than looking at the facts (It seems absurd…).
Any of these misconceptions can be clarified with a minimum of looking into the science. See e.g. John Cook’s site I linked to above.
PW @ 191 A denialist would probably say, since it ain’t true, full-steam ahead on global warming, deforestation, soil and water degradation, fisheries collapses and so forth. Which expresses the civility in debate problem perfectly: “they don’t agree with me so they must be EVIL, with EVIL INTENTIONS, only people who agree with me CARE”. Sigh.
Chris 199 In a way some of the problems have been caused by a lack of funding for science. Or poor management of the funding provided. There has actually been rather a lot of money poured into climate science. And climate science advocacy come to that.
As for PW’s follow up point @200 on public broadcasting, spare me. It is one of the most regressive forms of public spending (along with higher education). Public broadcasting suffers some management issues (as, strangely enough, does higher education: could it perhaps be for related reasons?), it is hardly starved for lack of funds.
I take it you are referring to the 1971 Science article by Rasool and Schneider (why do skeptics always lose the first author)? They did assess the role of aerosols. They got he physics right and had not forseen the mass installation of filters to fight acid rain, so how does that make Prof. Schneider and enthusiast for manmade global cooling?
With regard to attribution, I defer you to the IPCC and SkepticalScience, this is beyond the scope of this blogpost. “the best response to to control emissions, and do it early, rather than mitigation, is very much not established.” is a strawman. We need all, reduction of CO2 emission to limit warming and ocean acidification, mitigation to deal with some aspects that we can mitigate and adaption to the rest.
And keep in mind, while humanity has the option of mitigation and technical aids for adaption, the ecosystems that sustain us don’t. They survive, they move or they don’t. Creating new ones takes way more time than destroying existing ones. I don’t recall who I am paraphrasing: “We will have mitigation, adaption and suffering. It is for us to chose the mixture.”
I’m up way too late and it shows in my spelling. Good night, all.
G’night bluegrue. I’m off to work in a tick as well, so please be nice, everyone.
(hopeful smile) Remember, the aim is to have civil conversations! And I think that in the main, we have succeeded admirably.
For those interested in the psychology of moral differences, I particularly recommend this post summarising a study of the psychology of libertarians (compared to US liberals and conservatives: the study itself is also recommended) where the researcher also discusses the dangers of moralising bias.
BG @206
Because Schneider played a lead role in the warming debate and Rasool did not perhaps? There is an excluded middle: human effects are not creating catastrophic cooling OR warming. Prof. Schneider seem to leap over that from one side to the other.
No, it is not a strawman, since reduction in emissions costs and the greater the reduction, the greater the cost. So, where the balance between reduction in emissions and mitigation is, is a very open question.
My previous comment needs a link end to the first link!
LE, scepticism of policy is deserved if it is not evidence based.
If you want to question the evidence you need to refer to expert opinion, which is overwhelmingly in favour of GW and AGW.
A point I was trying to make in the post is that an expert looks more expert and will be regarded as a lot more trustworthy if he or she can deal with questioning. Look how well Roger comes across above, or how well Professor Schneider came across.
Perhaps you have not looked hard enough, because most of the scientists I have listened to have been pretty much the same as Roger or Schneider. I don’t know why you would say that. They have always been willing to answer questions, and pass on knowledge.
I did ask a climate scientist once why he didn’t get out and debate people on the blogs. He said he had tried, but that there are many people who will never be convinced about the science. Why should he waste his time on them? He spent several hours answering my questions, and was very polite and considerate to me.
Hannah’s Dad – that’s SL, not ME! I value equality most. I think that’s the essence of my position. I’d prefer to mitigate the effects and have an egalitarian society than to have a society where only the very rich can afford air travel, cars etc.
From another blog.
How do you know mitigation will work? Why is prevention impossible and unjust, but mitigation will be no problem at all? Will mitigation mean that only the rich get by fine? We are the one species that has a hope of mitigation, have you asked the other species on the planet what they are planning to do to cope?
Lorenzo,
I found Jonathan Haidt’s TED talk on the moral mind to be an interesting insight into psychology of morals.
Snide:
What scientists say is actually the least important of our concerns. What is far more important is what we do about it in terms how we organize ourselves to cause least detriment to our living standards.
The left wing prefers to lump all those disagreeing with action as skeptics, which is another leftwing example of mass delusion. There are many people that disagree with the actions the left proposes because it won’t work and is actually less evidence based than those who are accused as denialists. Not only is it less evidence based but it would also damage our living standards to no end.
The most delusional of course are the greens who suggest all sorts of economic rubbish to justify their proposal to the point where they even ignore a basic economic treatise, which is the broken windows fallacy (look it up) and would be amusing if it wasn’t so potentially damaging.
You can’t have an effective ETS without the most important alterative in the suite of options. In other words it doesn’t work without nuclear in the mix, as propellers and magnifying glasses focused on panels are a laughable altnerative.
One term which I’d never heard until some spankers at LP started raining shit down on LE was “concern troll”. I gather it refers to someone who falsely asserts concern for a class of people as a justification for an argument. Is that right?
If so, why does the mere fact that the concern is false mean that the argument is wrong? The proposition that poverty-stricken people will be most affected by particular responses to climate change isn’t made more or less true by whether I (or anyone else) give a shit about their welfare. The point is either true or it is not.
It’s not as if the proposition can be dismissed out of hand. The market mechanism which (perplexingly to me) has been championed by the left is all about reducing consumption by making consumption more expensive. I don’t need to connect the rest of the dots do I?
I accept that there are competing considerations such as the prospect that regions largely populated by poor people are at the greatest risk of significant detriment through climate change, but that’s a valid competing argument. Simply dismissing an argument because you doubt that the person is genuine about their concern is hardly the response of a rational person.
This feeds into another point I want to make.
The difference between skepticism in the technical sense and skepticism as it is increasingly used is essentially the difference between a healthily cynical approach to assertions by scientists and the doubt which attends lack of trust. Lay people are skeptical in the sense that they don’t trust the people who assert that global warming is happening.
That lack of trust arises from the way those who advocate responses to global warming bully and disparage. That is not to say that there isn’t a decent spray of invective, bullying and disparagement from the other camp as well. There obviously is. Scroll up a bit to see some.
That concession made, take a stroll over to LP to see some of the garbage served up by the self-appointed guardians of scientific method and rationality. “Concern troll” is one of the more precious ones. Another example is the way that championing of “real” skepticism sits next to insistence that we “get past” the debate about whether AGW is happening.
As someone observed in this debate, you have to be careful about complaining about elitism, because plainly science has to be about elitism. That said, policy has to be about everything but elitism. Our policy responses have to be ones which carry as great a majority as can be mustered. Insisting that everyone be a believer in the science is a recipe for disaster and defeat.
As I said over at LP, not everyone has the time to comprehend it. Not everyone has the capacity to understand it. Some of us just have to put our trust in smart people who do understand it. Our preparedness to put our trust in smart people who do understand it is being eroded on any number of fronts. It is being eroded by things like “climategate”. It is being eroded by the acrimony in the debate. It is being eroded by the fact that those who advocate responses insist that we can’t get on board with those responses unless we confess our sins and become true believers. In other words, there is no room in the response to climate change for those who retain doubt but are prepared to give the benefit of the doubt,.
Nick, I finally plucked up courage to look at that thread again today, and fortunately it has been closed down. Thank goodness for that.
If so, why does the mere fact that the concern is false mean that the argument is wrong?
It doesn’t. It’s a rhetorical trick to place the object of criticism on the back foot and in defense mode. Once there the argument becomes ‘how much do I care for [insert cause for concern here]‘. While your opponents tries to convince everyone of their sincerity you don’t have to deal with boring stuff like the unintended consequences of our pet policy project.
The market mechanism which (perplexingly to me) has been championed by the left is all about reducing consumption by making consumption more expensive. I don’t need to connect the rest of the dots do I?
Yesterday I had a few words with a very polite Wilderness Society activist at LP viz Wild Rivers. I don’t think he’d considered that aspect of the legislation which essentially builds a resource wall that keeps relatively powerless people from gaining access to a resource they’re entitled to (because their’s) in or to guarantee that resource for bigger players who’re friendly with government members.
I suspect a lot of legislation supposedly in furtherance of sustainability and/or conservation will be used for this purpose. It’s part of the steady creep whereby government ignore property rights of small fry and transfer same to corporation with whom they’ve done a deal.
JC, are you willing to humor me and do a Gedankenexperiment? Assume we want to limit the warming to 2°C above pre-industrial to avoid, because that’s seems to be about where the really nasty consequences are expected to kick in. Current research indicates that even by cutting global CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050 we have a 1 in 10 chance to 1 in 2 chance to miss that goal. Assume that this is accepted as a good enough chance.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/hit-the-brakes-hard/
I know it’s not enough to limit emissions rate, we need to limit total accumulated emission, but for the purpose of this excercise a focus on rates will suffice. Nuclear power is on the table, breeder reactors are on the table (we don’t want to run into peak U235). By current standards fission won’t be available before 2050, if at all.
So the scenario is to reduce global emissions by 80% by 2050. How would you do it? What mechanisms do you propose? A short, rough sketch would be fine by me; I don’t intend to hog your time.
Nick, for a perspective on concern trolls in the climate debates from the other side of the fence, have a look here:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/02/betroffenheitstroll.html
Make up your own mind on it, I just want to give you the opportunity to see a different perspective. The man behind the moniker Eli Rabett is a Professor and atmospheric scientist. Warning: sympathy for percieved concern trolls is in very short supply over there. It may be a natural scientist thing, but a perceived muddying of water is frowned upon, as the subject at hand is complex enough as it is.
Blue…
Anyone that uses realclimate as some sort of authority on this subject can’t be serious, so this humor business you’re wanting is actually occurring in reverse. Realclimate is just a fright site. That’s all. It’s run by a bunch of dudes scaring the shit out of one another.
You want to know my solution? Sure.
Instead of spending wasted money on the subsidy whores (wind and Solar), which suffer terminal engineering constraints and economic scaling indivisibilities. Stop the rorting and promote nuclear energy as fast as we can instead taking the anti-science and innumerate approach in thinking propellers and magnifying glasses on plastic panels will provide enough energy to operate an industrial civilization.
There are some truly incredible advances going on in the nuclear field right now despite the fact that the environmental zealots stopped further advances dead in its tracks 30 years ago after 3 Mile Island. Economic scaling is taking place within the industry that will cater for around just 5 different sized and style of plants. The most recent bid that was made on a no alterations basis was $US1,800 per mega unit of power. Of course if the governments begin interfering the unit price will sky-rocket. That compares to $1200 per unit for Australian coal fired plants.
Left alone nuclear power would be able to go through the price of coal in next to no time, which I would guess would be by 2020.
So my solution is… no new coal plants allowed and from now on only allow nuclear plants and immediately remove any subsidy from the other whoring sectors.
Your parameters don’t seem to meld into what Richard Tol says are where the bulk of the expectations lie for 2050.
Read Tol’s paper replying to Stern before you go off to any scare sites as it would do you the world of good.
Lorenzo, links above now fixed. Sorry it’s taken so long – for some reason the site is running awfully slowly – must be this post!
@bluegrue, thanks for the link. If that’s the definition, it can hardly be applied to LE. She wasn’t professing to believe the premise. She was saying she doubted the premise, but even if it’s true it has problems.
Just viewed the Insight program and I think it was a typical con job from the usual suspects in the ABC/SBS in crowd. No conspiricy mind, just the result of like employing like for all these years. Skeptics like LE who participated ought to reflect on what was being played out. You were IMV all set up and taken advantage of. This is the Tony Jones level of bias writ loud. Total bias with the usual polite and smiling face. The format guarenteed the outcome, and the audience was conned in a blatant manner with the skeptics portrayed as a bunch of misfits, and no-hopers, with a good and decent scientist doing his best to bring the Dummies up to scratch and get them with the program.
I recall that the ABC broadcast Peter Garret’s Press Club address (conveniently just before he joined the ALP) and then repeated the broadcast later, but would not broadcast Lomborg’s Press Club address even once. These guys are committed activists on Green issues, and AGW is the focal point of their entire (now IMV collapsed) world view. That is why they are so hysterical and so obvious with the bias. Among numerous other things, they always have time to put on the latest ranting from Prince Charles as he runs around GB in his private train fuelled by recycled chip oil no less!
The presenter did not answer the criticism about where is our expert to expose your expert, by stating the whole audience as skeptics. (note An impression was left by this show, viewers were meant to perceive how tiny and how inarticulate this lot really are) Consider who the presenter went for first and second, to set the tone.
The audience would have been better used had they worked through their various questions and then had their own ‘champion’ (Lindzen for a comparable Yank) bring out the key questions and what’s more in the correct order required for such a short program.
Professor Lindzen would have focused the issue clearly from the start to feedback. The issue of CO2 is only catastrophic if there is a positive feedback, and there is no credible settled scientific evidence that would lead any reasonable person to not still be engaged in very civil discussions. There is no reason to accept the hockey stick crowd that have come to stack the IPCC as credible scientists, who are just too busy to do things properly, let alone be civil.
JC @ 165 is correct about Roger! You would have to be entirely wet behind your ears to cop that soft soaping of the climatgate scandal. This junk science is going the way of Paul Ehrlich and his population bomb!
Snide:
What scientists say is actually the least important of our concerns. What is far more important is what we do about it in terms how we organize ourselves to cause least detriment to our living standards.
The left wing prefers to lump all those disagreeing with action as skeptics, which is another leftwing example of mass delusion
More pointless politics. Realclimate is an excellent site with many excellent discussions on current topics of climate that have been raised in popular media. Your reference to ‘left’ indicates a common interest in baseless conspiracy theories. The scientists aren’t out to destroy capitalism.
It may seem counter-intuitive that if you want to get people to trust your message, you have to allow people to try to shoot it down. Funnily enough, however, that’s the way the law works when parties present evidence. The witness gives an examination-in-chief, the opposing barrister attempts to shoot it down with a cross-examination, questioning that version of the facts at each juncture.
Science has a long time tradition of exactly that, it is called the peer review/published papers process. What has been going on in the wider world is not scrutiny, but agression, defamation of individuals and ignorance. Scientists tend to naturally avoid lowering themselves to that level, and avoid the all in brawl that tends to result, since it is part of their training to not do so, and debases science, not advances it.
Why the snark, Snide? LOl
You asked me what I thought and I nicely spent a little time telling you what I thought. I also offered up some free advice suggesting you stay off fight sites and all I get is snark from you snide. Thanks a lot for the appreciation.
An addendum on Rasool and Schneider, looks like I misremembered:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/08/way-it-goes.html
JC, why your snark regarding RC? Double standards?
Science has a long time tradition of exactly that, it is called the peer review/published papers process. What has been going on in the wider world is not scrutiny, but agression, defamation of individuals and ignorance.
I’d agree with that. There’s been a massive PR campaign to paint the science itself as some kind of conspiracy. While I’m appalled at the doctrinairre repression of dissent or questions viz AGW it must be said that it developed as a response to this kind of thing.
Scientists tend to naturally avoid lowering themselves to that level, and avoid the all in brawl that tends to result, since it is part of their training to not do so, and debases science, not advances it.
Many do. But I’ve known quite a few scientists, especially of the ecologically concerned persuasion who completely forget these scientific cautions and voice their opinions as if objective fact. The pro-AGW line tends to declare: the science is settled and anyone who disagrees in any way is immoral. That’s not scientific. The science is not settled. The real situation is that there’s an awful lot of evidence for this particular theory and not much against it. But the claim to objective arguments tends to fail once you start playing politics with the figures.
Where this started I’m not sure. I’d bet a million dollars it has something to do with the above mentioned shitfight.
Blue:
It wasn’t a snark at all.
It’s Realclimate is not a science site it’s an advocacy site and in fact had its genesis from a far left wing PR firm.
Oops It’s that Real…..
You could, you know, just read the papers instead of relying on an economist to give you a proper summary.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08019.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08017.html
They were linked to on RC. Or do you want to dismiss peer-reviewed literature out of hand? If you should decide to read the above, I’d be obliged if you pointed out, where Schmidt and Archer go wrong in their view
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/4581117a.html
JC, if you want to make the case that Environmental Media Services influences the research and communication of Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Caspar Ammann, Rasmus Benestad, Ray Bradley, Stefan Rahmstorf, Eric Steig, David Archer, Ray Pierrehumbert, Thibault de Garidel and Jim Bouldin by providing the infrastructure for realclimate.org, be my guest. Thank you for this insight into your thinking.
Blue
I’m making the case that Realclimate is advocacy site and has issues with its credibility especially when its genesis was a far left wing PR firm.
It’s basically a scare site.
Appreciate your gratitude.
LE
I watched the program and thanks for alerting us as it was quite interesting. I’m awfully sorry the guy passed away like that. Having said that I think it was awfully dishonest and disingenuous of him to agree with you (and the other person straight after you) that he agrees its really wrong for people that don’t agree with AGW to be treated like lepers and murderers.
For Christ sake he was a member of the IPCC and according to his own trumpeting a pretty senior one at that, as he wrote the risk analysis report. He’s a member of that group and though he’s agreeing with you about shoddy treatment he’s also remaining silent about the current IPCC chairman and soft-porn writer who increasingly looks like a grubby little fraud yet he’s used almost exactly the same to accuse people that looked into in financial misdeeds.
That’s why I continue to say that the top echelons of this scientific sector needs to be cleaned out and people like Pachauri, Gavin Schmidt sent on long term gardening leave, as they’re a disgrace.
Again there’s nothing wrong with cleaning house and starting up again with a newer fresher generation of scientists in the Judith Curry mold.
That dude on the program wasn’t being as honest as he should have been otherwise if he agreed that your treatment has been terrible etc he should have resigned from the IPCC seeing its grubby chairman has used the same terms to abuse people
I love the phrase “climate agnostic”.
I agree that there is definitely a class issue here. Having enough so that you can sacrifice something today in order to ensure a better future for future generations is a sign of economic privilege.
Assuming that everything the climate change “believers” say is true – and that the Earth is heating up just the way they say that it is heating up – that doesn’t meant that for every person on Earth, preventing climate change is more important than keeping costs low, reducing unemployment, etc.
If you can’t afford food or a roof over your head now, the question of what your grandchildren will eat or where they will live is irrelevant.
That’s a joke, I hope?
See her performance on stoat
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/round_in_circles_with_accelera.php
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/accelerated_warming_of_the_sou.php
Commented summary on Rabett Run
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/08/judy-and-intertubes.html
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/09/taking-it-to-new-level.html
Furthermore, take a look at her defense of Montford over at RC. She starts with a “drive-by comment” (her description, #74) accusing the author of the Montford review of “numerous factual errors and misrepresentations, failure to address many of the main points of the book”. When called upon this she comes back and “so I am taking a few moments to clarify the weaknesses in Tamino’s review. Note, this is off the top of my head, I don’t have the HSI book with me.” (#168) She gets skewered by Schmidt in an extensive inline response for getting several points of fact plain wrong. Usually one would think these are her own thoughts on Montford books, claims that she has looked into and verified. This is what you do, if you defend a book by accusing the reviewer of multiple errors. Not so Curry. “Gavin, the post I made in #167 was a summary of Montford’s book as closely as I can remember it, sort of a review. I did not particularly bring in my personal opinions into this, other than the framing of montford’s points.” (#185) However, later down in the thread suddenly it has turned into a review again “which are far more detailed and documented than the points i made in my review of Montford’s book.” (#290)
That’s the kind of scientist you want to lead the IPCC?
If you don’t trust the above, because it happened on AGW blogs, watch her repeatetly being called for getting points of fact wrong on collide-a-scape. That’s a neutral site, just look at her performance. And no, I have no intention of doing the digging for you. It’s a pattern: Say A, be called upon it. Sorry about A, but look at B, Oops, B is not true either; but hey look at C, three times is the charm. Not? Oh, sorry, gotta hurry. Byeeee.
My impression is that she has chosen to rely on the wrong people for information. Sad.
I think this thread has run its course and notice that I let myself being drawn into off-topic catfights, while real life is knocking on the door. I hope I was helpful in previous comments. Goodbye.
Sorry – have been having dinner then bathing kids…haven’t been superintending thread. Thanks, bluegrue.
Blue, I hope it’s run its course… it would be nice. I’ve seen longer threads of doom in my time (including one on my old blogging home, Catallaxy, that went for 2000+ comments), but this one has had some pretty chewy contributions from lots of people.
Just for purposes of historical record, the 2000+ comment thread of doom was on… fractional reserve banking. Economists with too much time on their hands…
Blue:
You keep sending me to sites that are essentially advocacy ones and just simply alarmist. I only opened one of those idiotic links of yours and quickly clicked the return button to get the hell out of there.
Seriously, are you some sort of failed stand up comic? I’m not kidding. You pretend to be a person concerned with “da science” and you send me to Little Green Footballs (a left wing angry loon), Unrealclimate (brimming with a bunch of snide oddballs) and the latest nut-cases from scienceblogs, which is trying to up it bulk readership by having the local asylum fill their ranks bloggers
I told you or that other alarmist to go read Richard Tol as he has an excellent paper responding to Stern’s crap. Tol has researched where the bulk of the studies lie in terms of expectations and therefore what is required in terms of mitigation to match where the average sits.
There’s no point in relying on one paper and suggesting that is the one to go with. You need to see where the bulk of the peer research stands in terms of expectations and go from there. Outliers or the script for 2012 just doesn’t cut it any more.
Also good call on preferring outright frauds like soft porn novelist Dr. Pach over Judith Curry. That’s why I think climate science is currently fucked.
Also good call on preferring outright frauds like soft porn novelist Dr. Pach over Judith Curry. That’s why I think climate science is currently fucked.
Pachauri is not a fraud, it’s all just part of the denialist focus on the sideshow, not the science, since they don’t have anything meaningful to say about the science. If you did have a case, that would be all you had to say to bring it all to a grinding halt.
Dear Legal Eagle,
thanks for your post. As a AGW “believer” (I hate that word
) I am interested to hear the arguments of AGW “sceptics” (or agnostics).
I personally believe that there is strong evidence for AGW and hence it would be wise (in the sense of risk-management) to try to diminish GHG emissions.
In your post you say that “I believe that a level of scepticism is essential to proper, rigorous scientific method, and thus people ought to maintain scepticism about any scientific hypotheses”. As a scientist, I agree with this. However, when it comes to political or personal decisions, this attitude is clearly not very useful. For example, we will never be sure whether HIV causes cancer, but hardly anyone argues that we should not fight aids , because of any fundamental scientific uncertainties. Note that there are actually (very few) scientists who dispute the evidence that HIV causes AIDS.
So, I believe your argument that scientific knowledge is by definition not certain, is really besides the point. All knowledge is uncertain, but still we need to act on what we think we know. The correct approach, in my view, is that we should try to find out how certain we actually are. As you correctly point out “I don’t have the scientific or the statistical capacity to judge the various accounts as to what is going to happen with our climate”. Nor do I. So what I do is try to learn the opinions of experts, see how much consensus there is and if I do that I find out that, although there are differing views, the large majority of experts believes AGW is happening. In a sense it is exactly the same as my analogy with HIV/AIDS. Although there are a few experts that claim that AIDS is not caused by HIV, I believe my doctor and the overwhelming majority of experts , because I don’t have the time to study this issue myself.
So my question is: why have you come take the agnostic/sceptical view wrt climate change, but not in so many others topics in your life in which you trust on expert opinions? (as I assume you do)
Good idea, Snide always back a loser and that way you’re sure to get public opinion on side. Can I suggest that the IPCC board also hire Bernie Madoff as the go to guy for financial advice to sit on the board that way he’ll help out Dr. Pach with his financial shenanigans?
Two points:
1) I second BlugGrue’s recommendation of Spencer Weart’s book in comment #196.
2) I think JC’s recent posts about RealClimate, Scienceblogs, Pachauri et al are pretty representative examples of the ‘sceptic’ side of the ongoing controversy.
Regards
Luke
Skeptic Lawyer does a lawyer thing here:
“Immanuel Kant was (a) not a scientist and (b) spent a great of his time complaining about masturbation and the morality thereof. If you’re to be nasty you’d write him off on the basis that he was egregiously ignoring practical applications of his work.
a)I wrote that it’s not just *scientists* who can be expert but be poorly skilled at communicating with laymen; I used Kant as an example of that. And b) twisting ‘working an audience’ , which is what I wrote, to ‘practical applications’ is a disingenuous tactic at best.
“Personally, while all that is being debated, I am all for looking at how we can mitigate the effects of rises in temperature, and researching alternative fuel sources”
There’s no progress on researching alternate technologies.
And mitigation is going to be more expensive and involve more societal change than reducing emissions. I can and have whipped up a conceptual design to capture CO2 from a power plant for sequestration using technology that’s been around since before World War I. Without a price on CO2 it won’t progress much beyond the conceptual design stage though.
Deciding what the South-Western US’s water infrastructure looks like if the Sierra and Rocky snow-pack melts six weeks earlier each year is a bit more tricky, but it probably involves use of the phrase “Arizona is f**ked”.
And Skeptical Lawyer, to write “In this debate, you either win the empirical argument or we policy wonks will assign you to the outer darkness.”
suggests that you don’t know what ‘empirical’ means. Climate science isn’t divorced from observational data. Far from it. The scientists are the ones collecting the measurements of the physical world, doing the analyses of the data, building and testing models based on those data, and reporting those results. This is what scientists do.
That the climate is changing globally towards warmer, and that humans are a significant contributor to the current warming, are very little in doubt among scientists, including so-called ‘skeptical’ ones, though you’d hardly know that from the despicable noise barrage thrown up on the Internets. The ‘debate’ is more rightly about what’s to be done about it, i.e., policy.
As for writing people off, no one is saying that climate science shouldn’t try to communicate its findings to laymen. I’m guessing you’ve probably heard of those reports that the IPCC puts out every now and then — IIRC they do get s bit of news coverage — which in large part they exist to explain the science, and the predictions, to ‘policy wonks’.
I’m saying that not every climate scientist should be expected to give a dazzling performance to a lay audience, every time he/she publishes a paper that sets the blogosphere buzzing.
If climate scientists ‘lose’ because ‘you’ policy wonks fail (or simply refuse, for ideological reasons, or because you just don’t like their ‘attitude’) to understand or accept what they’re saying, *you’re* the one willing to ‘write them off’. Casting them into ‘outer darkness’? Really? That’s really intelligent behavior — like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Good for ‘us’, then, that ‘you’ policy wonks aren’t the *only* policy wonks out there.
“Anyone that uses realclimate as some sort of authority on this subject can’t be serious, so this humor business you’re wanting is actually occurring in reverse. Realclimate is just a fright site. That’s all. It’s run by a bunch of dudes scaring the shit out of one another.”
And that’s arrant bullshit.
JC sayeth:
“You keep sending me to sites that are essentially advocacy ones and just simply alarmist. I only opened one of those idiotic links of yours and quickly clicked the return button to get the hell out of there.”
Funny how you keep defining sites that don’t pass your purity tests as ”advocacy’ or ‘alarmist’. Through your lens, I bet Nature magazine is an ‘advocacy’ organ.
Anyway, try this one if you dare. It’s hard core climate science.
http://scienceofdoom.com/about/
Sigh, dare I say it, I hoped the thread o’ doom had petered off! I have the sinus and throat infection from hell and I’m feeling grumpy.
One of the things I find totally unedifying about this debate is the way in which advocates for either side say that one should just read their stuff because the other side is biased, untrustworthy, unprofessional and has a vested financial interest in presenting a particular point of view.
I confess it, I sighed inwardly somewhat when the first woman on the Insight program said that she thought the science was all a big plot to get government grants. But the other side do the same thing: the sceptical science is all a big plot to get money from oil companies.
Maybe it’s because I’m a lawyer, but reading only one side is an anathema to me. I’ve never had much time for the payola slur either. Deal with the substance, don’t waste time on throwing insults at the person.
Reading both sides of the debate certainly resonates with me. I have spent far more time reading on skeptic sites than AGW sites as I have always tended to believe AGW, but was unsure for a long time, and believe the best way to try and prove a theory is to try and disprove it.
If you are still looking at reccommendations for reading material, then from the point of view of finding the best possible counter arguments, I would suggest:
Stoat as someone who most people would consider very pro-AGW, but if he disagrees with something he will say so.
Rank Exploits, basically believes that AGW is true, but the warming rate overestimated.
Climate Audit – perhaps one of the smartest bloggers to criticise climate science, highly technical, very difficult to penetrate what is going on, and focused largely on issues of past temperature reconstructions, which I would argue are not relevant to the debate of whether Co2 will cause warming.
WattsUpWithThat – I believe the most popular anti-AGW blog.
Weather forums provide another alternate to looking into the AGW debate, and are the closest thing to neutral ground. I pretty much single handedly represent the pro AGW side at Weatherzone.com.au, and there used to be some smarter skeptics, but I either scared them off or convinced them. Netweather forums in UK has some reasonably smart people on both sides of the debate, and probably has some of the most thoughtful criticisms of AGW that I have seen, and some of the most polite debating that I have seen.
Personally I am quite interested in further exploring the view that the science is accurate, but the dangers exagerated. I am convinced that consensus AGW is our best prediction on what is likely to happen. And the best way to convincingly prove that AGW is dangerous is to try and prove the that AGW is happening, but is not dangerous, and the only views I come across are those that have already said ‘well AGW is not happening, but even if it were happening Co2 is plant food and ice ages are bad….’
thanks for the article LE.
I’ve only skimmed the comments but didn’t spot anything much along the lines of the connection b/w the science and politics of AGW and/or climate change (they are not the same thing, AGW is a subset of climate change). You can accept that humans are influencing the climate in important ways but not accept the need for the alarmist policy response of brute force reduction of CO2 beyond certain levels in a certain time frame. I think the scepticism ought to be directed at the linear model of science that assumes that strong scientific evidence of various types must be followed by policy decisions based on that evidence.
Politics is a different domain to science and must take into account different factors such as the will of the people. I think the surveys show that most of the population agree that climate change is a real issue but also don’t agree that we ought to dramatically alter our standard of living in response. So, it would be better to take policy action such as ramping up R&D into energy alternatives that are a better fit with what people want at a policy level. This is just a thumbnail of a position that has been consistently articulated by Roger Pielke jnr on his blog and books.
One of the things I find totally unedifying about this debate is the way in which advocates for either side say that one should just read their stuff because the other side is biased, untrustworthy, unprofessional and has a vested financial interest in presenting a particular point of view.
As a skeptic, you are free to evaluate the evidence, but if you are an interested amateur like me, when it comes to AGW the evidence very quickly becomes unintelligable. I simple do not have the skills in mathematics, chemistry, physics and statistics to be able to make an informed opinion.
However, the IPCC report is the case for AGW, and you should at least read that.
Snide, yes, I have read the IPCC report online.
hi legal eagle,
Firstly, thank you for putting your views so articulately.
My own observation is that whilst some aspects of the science definitely aren’t settled, there is a significant risk that we are in deep trouble and that is why some of the ‘believers’ are truly scared for the inhabitants of this planet (and sometimes rush around like mad people.) If you truly thought that there was a real and present danger to your family, wouldn’t you do the same?
The plane crashing scenario is used by some people to describe risk (eg if there was a plane that had a 50% chance of crashing, would you fly on it?) but I think this misses the point. This is not about personal risk: it’s about the whole planet, with all the species and ecosystems, including little ol’ us.
I don’t think we’re made to be able to think about this kind of stuff – it’s too huge, but it’s what we’re potentially facing. Ironically, perhaps it would be easier if it was only a 1% chance that something bad would happen.
You make a powerful point about equity, but I guess it’s all relative. A ‘battler’ in the outer suberbs of Sydney is like a king compared to most people in Bangladesh. It’s also interesting to me why we are supposedly the wealthiest we’ve ever been (in one of the wealthies nations) and yet there’s still so much poverty, inequity and struggle.
I find it depressing that the government doesn’t seem to have the intelligence to formulate smart policies that may address equity and climate at the same time (like Hanson’s tax and dividend approach.)
Anyway, personally, I hope you change your mind about the science because I think we need to bring everything we can to bear on this problem, and I think the only way we will really be able to solve it will be with a diversity of thinking.
Steve C.
Knock the you’re scared for the planet stuff as it’s just irrational bedwetting laughable nonsense. Grow a set and act a little more manly.
JC! *stern mother face* Please don’t get personal at Steve C, he’s been polite.
JC – grow up, idiot.
Sorry LE.
I think that Bill Kerr (#254) is spot on when he says ” I think the scepticism ought to be directed at the linear model of science that assumes that strong scientific evidence of various types must be followed by policy decisions based on that evidence.”
This issue has been obscured by the debate about the science. Acceptance that there is scientific evidence of AGW does not entail the conclusion “we must therefore act to slash carbon emissions right now”.
Tonight’s (Melbourne) Monthly Argument debate looks like being very relevant to this issue . There will be some speakers arguing that what we should or should not do about climate change does not flow directly from the science .
Details of the debate can be found
on the Monthly Argument website
And it’s also worth reading what Sceptic Lawyer had to say about it a few days ago.
Melbourne readers of this thread ought to come along!
Kerry, I so wish I could be there…but on top of everything else (kids, work) – I’ve totally lost my voice…what a trauma for someone who likes to talk!
Well …. you could come along and gesticulate …..
But seriously, it sounds as if you need a rest!
Real pity you can’t make it though. Hope you feel better soon.
The plane crashing scenario is used by some people to describe risk (eg if there was a plane that had a 50% chance of crashing, would you fly on it?) but I think this misses the point. Th
Wrong analogy. Death by a Thousand Cuts. There are a hundred and one more pressing environmental concerns that are directly relevant to human health now. For example, there is now very strong evidence that the so called diabetes epidemic is being driven in no small part by persistent organic pollutants. Yet I am probably the only person on this forum aware of that. Why? Because in these days everyone thinks about AGW as THE pressing environmental issue. It isn’t, not by a long shot. Even if AGW is a furphy we have irrevocably change the planet. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing but to argue as some do, that because “unintended consequences” we should not tinker, is to deny what human progress is about.
Probably directed at you LE more than most here, because I think your position remains closest to my own. I’m wondering if you have the time to watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7jvP7BqVi4
through several times until you get the sense of it, and if it affects in any way your thinking?
I guess JC will jump in (please spare me the “gets all his science from Youtube” just this once), but I am simply taking the base scientific data as “true”. Anyway, exits pursued by a bear, as they say…..
Kvd
Why do you assume I don’ believe there is AGW. I have said I find the science credible enough. It’s not my intention to dispute the science of AGW in the least, as I think it is a pretty big long term problem we need to deal with.
However part company with the rest of the believing community
1. In accusing others of being monsters that don’t believe in AGW or are like LE agnostic
2. I think it’s a long term problem
3. We don’t as yet really know the rate of change, as the science is not settled in that area by any long stretch.
4. The way we arrange our affairs in how we deal with AGW while ensuring the long term GDP growth continues to point higher instead of lower as a result of attempts by trogs to de-industrialize of civilization.
5. I believe disagreeable anti-growth, anti-development trogs seem to have taken over a large part of the debate.
6. The current crop of the top echelons of this science and their hangers on need to be swept aside.
Lastly I don’t fear change as I think we’re fully capable of dealing with this problem and convert over time to nuclear technology, which is really the only method that is open to us in allowing our industrial civilization to flourish.
I also don’t like seeing people getting taken in by the snake-oilers selling junk technology like wind and solar and essentially stealing our treasure.
If one truly believes in AGW the only way forward is ramping nuke tech both in implementation and R&D, as I believe the cost of nuclear power would fall below the cost of coal fired plants before too long making the switch a no brainer.
I actually believe that AGW is a sign of humanity’s success rather than failure. It’s success in terms of more and more of us are living lives filled with the latest gadgets etc making our lives more comfortable instead of extreme poverty. The more that join us the merrier. We have no problem in dealing with AGW if we’re rich.
JC agree with you re wind and solar, and the need to discuss nuclear. Don’t know about the upper echelons – sounds dramatic. I think I am becoming more urgently/actively pessimistic than I have been to date. Fear change? No, but way less confident than you express. Please accept my apologies for thinking/assuming you might immediately attack the data – which I repeat I am accepting as accurate with no independent proof of same.
Discuss nuclear should be start implementing nuclear. A typo not a change of opinion.
Trust JC to claim victory by backing all sides;
“I have said I find the science credible enough”
and
“The current crop of the top echelons of this science and their hangers on need to be swept aside.”
and then
“I actually believe that AGW is a sign of humanity’s success rather than failure….The more that join us the merrier. We have no problem in dealing with AGW if we’re rich.”
It’s a “Trust me and we will all be winners” sort of game
LE;
You’ve asked me to behave and I will, but you should ask Wodge the reisdent clown to either do the same or piss off because he seems to grudges from one site to another and only inflames discussions without adding anything.
KVD
25% of the world’s energy production is nuclear. I really don’t know what needs to be discussed.
As far as the top echelons go.. Take James Hansen for instance, He’s the first one that ought to be fired for suggesting senior executives at mining companies ought to be arrested and placed in jail for crimes against humanity. He’s also called people Nazis.
That turd ought to have been fired long ago and Schneider was being might disingenuous with LE for suggesting he agreed with her about the level of abuse when he’s remained silent about remarks by people like James Hansen. Where are Schneider’s public utterances recorded telling Hansen he was behaving and acting like a prick?
There’s nothing to be pessimistic about, KVD the world is a great place and we can deal with these issues without the need for these huge attempts at playing god.
As for picking winners there are no winners to pick other than nuclear power at the moment if you want emission free energy.
Its been a good thread.
LE, hope your nasty bug leaves you alone directly and you get to write many more thread starters.
JC, I was just about to ask Rog to behave himself. You have long stated your views, and you’re as entitled to them as Rog is to his. One of the things I really dislike is this binary mindset – skeptic/believer, right-wing/left-wing – as if there’s a tray of beliefs which are served up with each label, and there can’t be complexity and depth in someone’s beliefs.
As I said above, I have the most terrible cold, I’ve lost my voice, and I’m unwontedly grumpy. If people inflame the thread, I shall be forced to close it. >:-( No stirring the pot, anyone.
Trust JC to claim victory by backing all sides;
Victory? Where have claimed any sort of victory, Wodge, you unrequited little clown?
Point to any comment I’ve made, you intellectual handicap. As for backing all sides….
“I have said I find the science credible enough”
and
“The current crop of the top echelons of this science and their hangers on need to be swept aside.”
and then
“I actually believe that AGW is a sign of humanity’s success rather than failure….The more that join us the merrier. We have no problem in dealing with AGW if we’re rich.”
Only a mediocre toolie like you, Wodge with intellectual pretensions would find a problem with those comments suggesting they’re would cancel each other out. You’re even stupider than I ever thought you were, which takes some doing because you really are dumb.
It’s a “Trust me and we will all be winners” sort of game
Umm.. Which has been a pretty good game plan for the past 250 years. But if you have something better to offer that can lift livings standards faster/better, then present those facts, Wodge because somehow I don’t quite see you as the character in the movie about the genius janitor meeting Einstein’s niece. Some how you don’t strike me as being anything like that character, Wodgie.
oops I got in before your last comment. you can delete if you wish.
Sorry to here you feel so unwell.
Right. {rubs hands together} I have gratuitous Monty Python youtubes and I’m not afraid to use them!
Until then, there’s this…
JC, I was just about to ask Rog to behave himself. You have long stated your views, and you’re as entitled to them as Rog is to his
Everyone is entitled to their own views, no one is entitled to their own facts.
Snide, yes, I have read the IPCC report online.
I don’t know which person you were on the show, but IIRC, the report already covered every objection raised. Except the lunatic conspiracy theories, and other wackiness.
The claim that someone called his opponents Nazis is toxic in any debate. I’ve never heard of Hansen doing so.
In the meantime, SL, here is the material I know of that may have been twisted in the above way.
23 June 2008, testifying before Congress http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf and coverage at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/climatechange.carbonemissions
In an interview on 2 December 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/02/copenhagen-climate-change-james-hansen
Pertinent to the above charge is also Hansen’s “death train” reference http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2007/IowaCoal_20071105.pdf
While I find Hansen’s extreme imagry unhelpful in the debate, I think it’s important to note the context, where he calls for the trial of CEOs for their role in spreading disinformation and that he recalls Nazism not to call the opponents Nazis but to characterise AGW as an issue where you just can’t compromise.
I don’t care if anyone wants to condemn Hansen for any of the above, but if anyone wants to condemn him, then he/she should do so for what Hansen actually says.
Snide:
Pertaining to your comment regarding my response to rog, which “facts” are you alluding to that I may have got wrong.
Are you perhaps referring to the whoring from the altmerative energy schelps and their good little germans in the enviromental industry helping them propagandize their lying?
he calls for the trial of CEOs for their role in spreading disinformation and that he recalls Nazism not to call the opponents Nazis but to characterise AGW as an issue where you just can’t compromise.
The behavior of these corporations is not unusual, it is increasingly the status quo…
The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”
…
Dozens of ghostwritten reviews and commentaries published in medical journals and supplements were used to promote unproven benefits and downplay harms of menopausal hormone therapy (HT), and to cast raloxifene and other competing therapies in a negative light.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000335
Blue
While I find Hansen’s extreme imagry unhelpful in the debate, I think it’s important to note the context, where he calls for the trial of CEOs for their role in spreading disinformation and that he recalls Nazism not to call the opponents Nazis but to characterise AGW as an issue where you just can’t compromise.
LOl
‘sactly. I’m sure Himler felt the same way about Jews. We just can’t compromise of ridding ourselves of the dastardly Jews fellas, he must have said.
So now spreading disinformation or rather defending your own position is considered a capital crime is it? Remind yourself that every time you flick on a switch Hansen could be after you next.
I don’t care if anyone wants to condemn Hansen for any of the above, but if anyone wants to condemn him, then he/she should do so for what Hansen actually says.
‘sactly, which is why I think he ought to be fired, as he adds nothing but venom. And so much for government paid scientists being just casual observers of the political process.
Oh please spare me. He’s said exactly what I’ve say he’s said about people who supply the energy you need to flick the switch on every time it gets dark. The “big polluters’ are you and me and everyone else that turns on the lights or uses appliances. Divorcing this from reality is cognitive dissonance.
JC bbeing a bit losoe with the facts again:
“As far as the top echelons go.. Take James Hansen for instance, He’s the first one that ought to be fired for suggesting senior executives at mining companies ought to be arrested and placed in jail for crimes against humanity. He’s also called people Nazis.”
execs at mining companies ought to be arrested? There’s a few important qualifiers there you left out. Here’s what Hansen actually said (in 2008):
“CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”
So, it’s people at the very top whom he believes are purposely spreading disinformation — not ‘mining executives’ generally — who he considers criminals.
If *you* thought someone was willfully spreading dangerous lies, wouldn’t *you* call for them to be prosecuted? Isn’t that what Mr. Cucinelli is doing in VA — with far, far more clout to actually do it, than Hansen ever had? Isn’t that what the denialists have demanded be done to Jones, Pachauri?
It really comes down to whether the accusations are *true*, doesn’t it?
Re: ‘called people Nazis’. No, Hansen called no one a Nazi. He compared global warming as an *issue* to Nazism and slavery as *issues* — existential and moral issues — in terms of the response it calls for:
“This [climate change] is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill,” he said. “On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can’t say let’s reduce slavery, let’s find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%.””
Wow, JC, do you even realize what you just did there?
You slammed Hansen for supposedly calling people Nazis. After it was explained to you that you’re wrong, you slammed Hansen for daring to compare AGW to Nazism (and slavery) in requiring a no-compromise response. The way you did that was to…compare Hansen to the famously genocidal Nazi Heinrich Himmler.
*Incredible* lack of self-awareness there. Who is calling who a Nazi now?
Godwin’s
Gah… it’s not my thread to close, but now it’s hit Godwin we may have to. When LE surfaces she can make a final judgment call.
Still, 280+ comments BG (before Godwin) is pretty good.
Was just dropping elder Leaglet off at kinder. And yes, once we hit Godwin’s that’s it. Thread now closed.
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