The following comment from Ian Castles was made at the thread on yesterday’s blog post Greenhouse Mafia Gagging Scientists?:
“I hold the directly contrary view to that presented in the [4-Corners] program: CSIRO scientists have had exceptional freedom to present their personal views, and this freedom has been used to present a one-sided perspective on climate change issues, including in official publications of the Australian Government.
I could give many examples, but for the sake of illustration I’ll focus on Dr. Barrie Pittock, who lamented on last nights program that he wasnt allowed to put policy views into a government document.
Well, he’s had free rein to give his opinions in the book Climate Change: Turning Up the Heat, which was published by CSIRO Publishing last October with a laudatory Foreword contributed by Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC. The book has also been published in London by Earthscan, which is marketing it as a ‘major new textbook’.
Dr. Pittock makes no pretence of objectivity. On the pros and cons of the Kyoto Protocol and of quantitative emissions targets he cites a report to three State Governments, a report by the Australian Climate Group (‘consisting of a number of industry, science, and environment experts’), the Federal Governments Chief Scientist, Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute and ‘EU and UK thinking’.
He doesn’t so much as mention the views of experts whove studied these subjects in depth, such as Warwick McKibbin (‘the Kyoto Protocol is so badly constructed that it has set back the search for sensible and effective policy responses by at least a decade’), Aynsley Kellow (the Protocol is ‘a step in the wrong direction, and one which could hinder rather than help future international cooperation’), Richard Tol (‘the emission reduction targets as agreed in the Kyoto Protocol are irreconcilable with economic rationality’) and William Nordhaus (‘the Kyoto Protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal [and] threatens to be seen as a monument to institutional overreach’).
The Australian Governments ‘stated reasons for not ratifying the Protocol’ are set beside ‘some counter arguments’ in a box which is acknowledged to be based on a lecture in which Clive Hamilton caricatured the Governments reasons as ‘Silly Reason No. 1’, ‘Silly Reason No. 2” and so on. Dr. Pittock uses essentially the same ten reasons, but leaves out the word ‘silly’ and tones down Dr. Hamilton’s language somewhat.
Pittock represents Australias refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol as a symptom of an unenlightened attitude to the threat of climate change and to the future of humanity generally. He says that ‘The industrialised world currently gives about 0.22% of GDP [in international aid], with the United States and Australia (WHO HAVE NOT SIGNED THE KYOTO PROTOCOL) giving far less.’ This is wrong according to Yearbook Australia 2006, released by the ABS last month, which says ‘The ratio of Australia’s ODA to gross national income for 2005-06 is estimated at 0.28%, placing Australia above the donor average which, in the latest year available (2004), was 0.25%.
So far as the facts are concerned, I’ll put my money on the ABS – but why was the reference to the Kyoto Protocol introduced into a discussion of foreign aid?
In my own area of interest, the IPCCs emissions scenarios, Dr. Pittocks analysis is all over the place. In Chapter 3 he says that the scenarios ‘are clearly not predictions, and do not have equal probability of occurrence in the real world.’ Then in the next Chapter, he gives a simple example of a climate change PREDICTION in which CSIRO used its projected warming in the Macquarie Valley of New South Wales of between 1.0 and 6.0 deg C by 2070 (which uses the IPCC scenarios in conjunction with CSIROs calibration for regional variation) as input to a runoff model, from which it was concluded that ‘the projected change in runoff into the main water storage dam was in fact between no change (zero) and a decrease of 35% by 2070, which means a 50% chance of water supply decreasing by more than 17%.’ This calculation implies that the IPCC scenarios DO have equal probability of occurrence in the real world.
In a box headed ‘Impacts on Food Production’, Dr. Pittock reports the results ‘for all SRES scenarios’ of ‘a major international study’ of this subject by Martin Parry and colleagues. But Parry and his team didnt use all the SRES scenarios: for example, in the A1 family they only modelled the A1FI (FI = fossil intensive) scenario, and didn’t use the A1B (B = balanced) or the A1T (T = transition to sustainability) scenarios. Pittock correctly quotes the Parry et al paper as saying that the A1FI scenario is one of ‘greater inequality’, but in fact it is the scenario of LEAST inequality. He says that ‘the majority of people will be worse off’ by 2080, but with the possible exception of the A2 scenarios (which assume, improbably, that the world will by then have 14 billion people), the study shows unambiguously that the majority of people will be much better off by 2080. And so on.
Dr. Pittock has produced a 50-page set of ‘Supplementary notes and references’ to the book, which has been published on the CSIRO Publishing website. Its purpose is to avoid the need for footnotes or references to the literature in parentheses, which ‘can be offputting to the general reader’, and also to ‘bring the notes up to date, for example in relation to Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans about the beginning of September. Barrie Pittock says that, if he gets the time he ‘will try to further update these notes once or twice while the book remains current’. It appears that he’s completely free to do so.
The Supplementary Notes are outrageously one-sided. McIntyre and McKitrick are said to have made an ‘attack’ on the IPCCs ‘hockey stick’ graph, but Pittock explains that ‘Mann and co-authors are the recognised experts in the field, and thus best qualified to make the expert judgments on data quality and representativeness needed.’ (Have the experts in CSIRO’s Maths/Stats Division been consulted about the data quality and representativeness of the work of Mann & co?) . Dr. Pittock does not mention any of the three papers by M&M that were published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2005, or McIntyre’s Climate Audit site (though there are several references to the realclimate site which includes Michael Mann among its proprietors).
Dr. Pittock names Bjorn Lomborgs ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ as a classic sceptic text and cites two hostile reviews of the book (but no favourable ones). The immediately succeeding sentence begins with a reference to ‘Documentation of the fact that some [unnamed] leading contrarians have been funded by fossil fuel groups’.
Dr. Pittock claims that ‘IPCC in its emissions scenarios used both MER and PPP’, although David Henderson and I have explained in detail why it is that the so-called PPP scenarios produced by one of the IPCC’s model builders are not in fact PPP. He says that McKibben (sic) and colleagues have reviewed the argument over the use of MER or PPP in a paper published by the Lowry (sic) Institute for International Policy, but does not mention that the paper strongly criticises the IPCC emissions scenarios. Nor does he mention a paper in which McKibbin & Stegman ‘find strong evidence that the wide variety of assumptions about ‘convergence’ commonly used in emissions projectiions are not based on empirically observed phenomena.’ Nor does he mention a recent peer-reviewed paper by Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer of Monash University which lends support to the Castles & Henderson critique.
On the other hand, Dr. Pittock reports that ‘Pant and Fisher, from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, conclude in a 2004 paper ‘PPP versus MER: Comparison of real incomes across nations’ that ‘The use of MER by IPCC remains valid and the critique by Castles and Henderson cannot be sustained’. This conference paper has not been peer-reviewed, whereas the Castles and Henderson paper ‘International Comparisons of GDP: Issues of Theory and Practice’ (which Pittock does not mention) was published in World Economics, January-March 2005. The publisher of WE states that ‘All papers published in World Economics are read and reviewed by the executive editors who are all professors of economics of international repute.’
Incredibly, in the light of Barrie Pittock’s highly selective citation of sources, peer reviewed or not, which support his position, he says in his book that:
‘The peer review system means that statements based on such papers tend to be more reliable than other kinds of statements or claims. Claims made by politicians, newspaper columnists, special interest think tanks and campaign groups are not normally subject to such quality control beforehand.’
It would be interesting to know what quality control CSIRO Publishing applied to Dr. Pittock’s book.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Ian – however that was not the issue that was highlighted in the report. CSIRO scientists feel that they can freely comment on the science of climate change however they feel impeded when it comes to commenting on the POLICIES of the government of the day to take action.
Your rant sort of missed the point as far as I can see.
In the 4 Corners report for instance was a CSIRO spokesman that when asked about environmental refugees could not comment as this obviously was a point that he could not discuss without mentioning Government policy on refugees.
Ender, The program was promoted on the basis CSIRO scientists have been prevented from speaking publically on greenhouse issus – and this was very much the impression the program sought to convey. Ian has given a hard example that contradicts this – an example that includes science and policy.
Thanks Ender. I don’t know whether you’ve read Barrie Pittock’s book, but it deals with the politics as well as the science of climate change, and this is how Earthscan is promoting it. In his Foreword, Dr. Pachauri refers to the ‘political issues that have national as well as international dimensions’ that Dr. Pittock deals with in his concluding chapters.
Jennifer; on this thread I would like to see some responses from people, say Barney Foran, or someone else who has recently been through the mill at CSIRO.
Taz, They are free to comment here. But my suggestion would be that they also send me something to post as a new blog post – part 3.
There’s another issue about last night’s program that I think should be canvassed. I’ve now checked the transcript (the bit where I thought I must have been dreaming) and found that Janine Cohen DID say that ‘By 2050, [carbon dioxide emissions] are expected to more than double, causing a dramatic increase in warming, as much as four degrees.’
I’ve no idea where this figure came from, but the SRES Tables in Appendix II of the IPCC’s scientific report in 2001 show the projected increase in global mean temperature between 2000 and 2050 as varying between 1.05 deg. and 1.70 deg. for the six illustrative scenarios shown in these tables. And the statement by the International Scientific Steering Committee arising from the high level scientific conference at Exeter in February last year said ‘This means that the world will, in the absence of urgent and strenuous mitigation actions in the next 20 years, almost certainly be committed to a temperature rise of between about 0.5 degC and 2 degC relative to today by 2050. ‘
So Janine Cohen’s figure was double the highest prospective temperature increase canvassed at the Exeter Conference.
Yet the immediately succeeding sentence in the transcript is as follows:
DR GRAEME PEARMAN, FORMER CSIRO CLIMATE DIRECTOR: When the Earth warmed out of the last ice age, when half of the Earth was covered by ice, sea levels were 80m lower than they are now. The biosphere, the ecosystems, the animals and plants over the Earth’s surface were totally different from what they are now, that was only five degrees warming.
The ‘only five degrees warming’ quoted by Graeme Pearman invited comparison with Janine Cohen’s ‘as much as four degrees.’ Who checked the facts for ‘Four Corners’, and gave a tick to the ‘dramatic increase in warming’ by 2050?
Official complaints can be lodged with the ABC here, where there is concern about standards, bias, inaccuracies http://www.abc.net.au/corp/audience/complaints_how.htm . I gather Senator Bob Brown often lodges complaints.
Ender, just what the heck is an “environmental refugee”?
“Ender, just what the heck is an “environmental refugee”?”
The Ender dictionary for AGW chicken littles, says an environmental refugee is a penguin migrating to the southern Australian coastline during the hot summer in the Artic (or is that north).
– DR GRAEME PEARMAN, FORMER CSIRO CLIMATE DIRECTOR: When the Earth warmed out of the last ice age, when half of the Earth was covered by ice, sea levels were 80m lower than they are now. The biosphere, the ecosystems, the animals and plants over the Earth’s surface were totally different from what they are now, that was only five degrees warming.
What I see in this statement is simply the sea rose 80M from a time when half the earth’s surface was covered in ice. The key point was it took just five degrees change to do that.
This point is so important to our debate.
BTW somebody made this obvious to me about five decades ago as they did another point about the temporary overshoot of 2M before settling at our current level.
joe – I don’t know – BTW just how far do you live from the coast?
Can someone help me understand something here? Consensus estimates for global warming is that we are going to hot up between 1 to 6 deg C in about 50- to 100 years.
As we all know the earth has been a frozen death trap 80 to 90% of the time for the last 3 million years or so and we are due for another spell of glaciations right now.
As we know the only time we are able to survive on this planet is during times of warm weather. In other words animals and plant life thrive during periods of warmth while doing horribly during times of glaciations.
If CO2 is a heat insulator, wouldn’t we actually want more of it rather than less? In other words if the earth’s tendency is to stay iced and snowed under we would be much less likely to avoid the big chill. So shouldn’t we want more of Co2 or at the very least not worry what we a spewing out? After all Co2 is plant food, isn’t it? Let’s face it the South Pole isn’t going to be roasting with a 6 deg increase for the next 100 years.
Aren’t we worrying about the wrong thing?
I know this isn’t what this thread is about, however I would dearly love to get an intelligent answer to my point here.
This isn’t for you Ender as you are too far gone to even think straight and you did promise not to talk to me again.
(Last few lines of comment deleted by Jennifer at 5.04pm)
I really don’t have a problem with those estimates and I certainly wouldn’t regard myself as a denialist. Especially not when the US Academy of Sciences has come out ( in that case who am I to deny the ACS).
So my question isn’t from a denial perspective as much as tring to understand what all the fuss is about (other than say people like Prof. Quiggin attempting to get a seat on the next labor party panel that will try to root up the Australian economy).
Taz, I agree that what you see in this statement is all that Graeme said, and I also agree that it is an important point. But the immediately succeeding comment, by Barrie Pittock, also referred to alarming possibilities and also mentioned 4 to 5 degrees.
I don’t suggest that there was an intention to mislead, but as a direct result of Janine Cohen’s use of what appears to be a grossly exaggerated figure for temperature rise, and the failure of either Graeme Pearman and Barrie Pittock to correct her, viewers WERE given a false impression.
Let me mention here what Rosemary Righter, Associate Editor of The Times, said in her submission to the Lords Committee about the Exeter Conference (from the Executive summary of which I’ve quoted):
‘[The conference] became something like a contest between which horror stories – the Vanishing Gulf Stream, Millions Dead of Malaria in the Midlands, the Parboiled Polar Bear – would do the best job of making the public’s flesh creep. As spin for the Government’s case that climate change is a threat greater than terrorism, this was no doubt effective. As guidance to policy-makers, it was a disgrace. Tall stories have no place at G8 summits. Scenarios such as these are what scientists know as ‘computer-aided story lines.’ They are not reliable predictions, and to base decisions on them would be not only absurd, but pernicious.’
Ms Righter also said that she had made some of the points in her submission in The Times and had been ‘overwhelmed with the response from experts, both economists and scientists, who are frustated and disturbed by the cold shouldering of research that does not accord with environmental fashion. ‘
Joe,
Living things generate heat in a dynamic biosphere.
Dead things don’t and ice ages create fossils.
Infrared sensors are used to track living things by imaging their body heat.
Infra red detectors can’t detect dead things.
Living things generate CO2, so abundant and variable CO2 is a sign of life. This is not necessarily a truism.
So you are quite right – they are worrying about the wrong thing, but once started on a scare, the herd becomes extremely difficult to stop – but stop it will, beginning with one or two individuals until the whole herd settles down till the next scare happens.
The first individuals to stop are the ones who sense no danger. In this debate they are the climate sceptics.
Ian – “CSIRO PUBLISHING operates as an independent science and technology publisher with a global reputation for quality products and services. Our internationally recognised publishing programme covers a wide range of scientific disciplines, including agriculture, the plant and animal sciences, and environmental management.
Our product range includes journals, books, magazines and CD-ROMs. We publish content in print and online, and our editorial standards and production methods are at the forefront of e-publishing standards. We are also able to offer the services of our award-winning multimedia group to external clients.
CSIRO PUBLISHING is an autonomous business unit within Australia´s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation”
As the CSIRO publishing is an autonomous business entity then presumably the titles published there do not always reflect the management or government view.
As far as I can see Dr. Barrie Pittock chose to publish HIS book with this publishing company. I am sure that the CSIRO, if pressed, would argue that the views expressed in this book do not consitute official CSIRO policy and reflect only those of the author.
To nail the person you would have to produce a document published under CSIRO auspices showing political commentary disgreeing with the government of the day. The example you quoted is an independant book that happened to be published by the CSIRO publishing company.
Ender, Yes of course. Barrie Pittock states that the views are his own ‘and do not necessarily represent the views of CSIRO, the AGO, the IPCC or other affiliated parties.’ But he wrote the book as an Honorary Fellow at CSIRO, and I’d be very surprised if Dr. Pachauri would have contributed a Foreword if Dr. Pittock had asked him to as a private citizen.
The connection between between CSIRO Publishing and CSIRO raises an interesting point. In May 2002, twelve eminent, tenured US scientists wrote to Cambridge University Press protesting at CUP’s publication of Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist and demanding, inter alia, that they hive off the marketing of this book to another company that didn’t carry CUP’s prestige. Lomborg’s book has 2980 footnotes and so its easy to trace his sources. Despite intensive scouring over many years, Lomborg’s critics have only found a handful of minor errors. By comparison, Barrie Pittock’s book has no footnotes, but I noticed many errors in the course of a quick reading.
#2 Ender, just what the heck is an “environmental refugee”?
( I ask that as Ender clearly states that he knows about such things)
Thanks Louis
I have come up from the wrong side of the street in the sense that I am not a scientist or anything like that. My background is as a currency trader and use a lot of probability type calculations. Of course, not every trade is a probability calculation in a complex maths sense, but it’s not too far away.
I am also quite aware of he herd instinct and the need to feel one belongs, as every trader falls for this weakness at times.
So if the facts are laid out like the following
1. AGW will mean 1 to 6 deg C over the next 100 years or so.
2. 90% of the time the world is covered in snow and ice
3 During these glaciations most little animal life can survive, while plant life goes into deep sleep
4 Co2 is plant food
5 Lots of CO2 around means lots of plants and animals etc.
6 Warmer weather means more plant and animal life
That said with the balance probability that glaciations are to occur, with one due again anytime and Co2 being a good heat insulator why on earth are we thinking there is a problem here? Is there something I missed?
For the life of me other then the herd mentality or the more nefarious reasons which I alluded to earlier I cannot see where we have a problem. Like trading if something works aren’t you supposed to do more of it?
By the way. Jennifer, you have a really good website and a really cute pic up there.
In fairness to Dr. Pittock, I should have made clear that his ‘Supplementary notes and references’ do in general provide references to the sources he has used in the book, and I did not intend my comments to be critical of the practice he has followed. My point was rather that Lomborg made it extremely easy for anyone to check what he said against the source. For a sole-authored book of over 500 pages, the level of accuracy achieved was extraordinarily high – much higher, in fact, than in the IPCC Reports which were also published by CUP.
Ian: Thanks for your agreement with my last post.
But Ian; have you considered Barrie Pittock may not be using recent data or climate models as the sole basis for his worst case estimate?
What bothers me most; no one is discussing the 2M ebb. Evidence is so easy to find but in watching debates over the last two decades I have obviously missed all references to that most important climate? sensitivity factor.
Any models need to be calibrated to account for it, particularly on sea levels.
Joe,
No you have missed nothing and introduced a bit of market commonsense here.
But the temperature prediction is too high – all the scary estimates are from computer predictions of climate, which like economic prediction.
As Paul Samuelson quipped, “Wall Street indices predicted nine out of the last five recessions?”
Current estimates of warming are about .12 dCelsius per decade, so 100 years time, everything else being equal, the mean global temperature “might” rise 1.2 degrees.
Extrapolation from the NCDC data puts warming at a lower 0.08 dC/decade so that means even lower estimates.
You are right, when the “street” works out something doesn’t make sense, you know you’re on the right track.
In this case the gross economic damage this herd instinct is capable of requires a lot more resistance than the Tulip Boom or more recently the dotCom boom.
There is a driving undercurrent to the whole issue which has been hidden under all the scientific and statistical point scoring.
Ian – “I’d be very surprised if Dr. Pachauri would have contributed a Foreword if Dr. Pittock had asked him to as a private citizen.”
No probably not however as an internationally renowned climate scientist then Dr Pachauri obviously had no problem no matter where Dr. Pittock
is employed.
“Yes of course. Barrie Pittock states that the views are his own ‘and do not necessarily represent the views of CSIRO, the AGO, the IPCC or other affiliated parties”
And in admitting this is entirely invalidates your entire rant which was the point of ny first post. You have missed the point and the example that you provided is not an example of a CSIRO scientist being able to speak freely about policy while speaking as an employee and representing the CSIRO.
Joe – just in case you mistake Louis for anything remotely approaching and authority on this more knowlegable people than either you or I state this:
“Climate sensitivity is indeed uncertain, but the classic IPCC range (in my opinion) is still a good ‘likely’ estimate. Any suggestion that climate sensitivities are significantly larger (or much smaller) need to be accompanied by an explantion of how forcings and temperature response at the peak of the last ice age (for instance) can be dealt with or explained away. There are a number of papers in the pipeline that tackle this question from a number of different angles (using multiple ensembles for the last ice age, better observational constraints on the climateprediction.net ensembles etc.). I will venture a guess that most of these approaches will actually reduce the error bars on the sensitivity – not increase them.”
The range that Gavin refers to is:
“1.5 to 4.5 deg C for a doubling of CO2”
reference:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=168
a site where descriptions match the paper
You know what Ender I don’t think you have ever worked in an large organization before!
Large organizations don’t work the way you or 3 Corners think they should. Not everybody is allowed to speak to the media. There are rules for that. And most firms etc. have designated spokespeople who handle media.
So I don’t quite get where you or any of these poeple are getting off here.
If they weren’t designated spokespeople they have no right speaking to the media on comapny “matters”. Were they muzzled. Sure they were and corrctly so I would imagine?
I also see this as a trumped farce to be honest. It’s far too cute after the NASA guy came out all these scientists roll out of the CSIRO crying me to. This too staged for my liking and not even original.
How the windmill going?
Warren Buffett said that the only good charts are the ones that you can hang upside down.
Or was it Charlie Munger, I am just reading his latest book “poor charlies almanac”.
‘Invert, always invert,’ Jacobi said. He knew that it is in the nature of things that many hard problems are best solved when they are addressed backward”
“I realized that technical analysis didn’t work when I turned the chart upside down and didn’t get a different answer.”
poor Charles Munger.
So Ender, What you are really saying, other than taking a swipe at Louis, is that no one has done any reasearch on these very issues at this stage- although it’s on its way.
This is amazing to me. All those billions of Dollars spent on salaries, boondoggles and I am sure research grants up the “wazoo”-and this research is coming!!!
Now I am not critical of you of course in all this as you are only the messenger.
But I have to tell you, if after all that money has been spent we still don’t have answers like this I would do what we used to practice on Wall Street. Fire the whole friggen lot of these clowns and start again.
I’m no genius and came up with some of these issues all by own . Mr.& Ms. Scientist (plural) should have had all these questions down pat by now.
I am quite frankly amazed.
Some of these dicks at the CSIRO are fighting to get on TV and have no pertinent research to show at least to some basic questions I have.
Seriously, fire the bastards all round the world and start again.
Ender, Are you suggesting that Graeme Pearman, Barrie Pittock, Kevin Hennessy, Barney Foran and every other scientist in CSIRO should be able to speak freely about policy while representing the CSIRO? If CSIRO scientists disagree with one another, which of them represents the Organisation?
The fact that Barrie Pittock is an internationally renowned climate scientist does not endow his views on emissions targets or international aid with any particular authority. I fully understand that Dr. Pachauri had no problem giving his imprimatur to Dr. Pittock’s book. I’m the one who had a problem, and I wrote to Dr. Pachauri to raise the strongest objection to his action. What gives the IPCC and its Chairman the right to decide who they’ll villify and who they’ll honour with their patronage?
Ender
your quote of Gain’s is simply a guess. That climate sensitivity value has never been experiementally determined, and it simply a statement assumed to be correct.
Your whole global warming is based on this “GUESS” and as I have shown on my blog, it cannot be scientifically tested, hence it is not a scientific theory.
Not being a scientific theory, what else could it be?
Scientists on the public payroll should have a right to express their views on topical issues free of Government interference.
The public’s right to information is infinitely more important than a Government’s right to avoid embarrassment.
Ian – “Ender, Are you suggesting that Graeme Pearman, Barrie Pittock, Kevin Hennessy, Barney Foran and every other scientist in CSIRO should be able to speak freely about policy while representing the CSIRO? If CSIRO scientists disagree with one another, which of them represents the Organisation?”
Are you suggesting that all scientists in the CSIRO should toe the party line no matter whether it is correct or not? Basically according to you the CSIRO should be a government mouthpiece and nothing more – not an independant world class research organisantion where a diversity of views on science and policy should be encouraged.
Louis – “your quote of Gain’s is simply a guess. That climate sensitivity value has never been experiementally determined, and it simply a statement assumed to be correct.”
As is yours. Gavin’s guess I hold to be more valid than yours because of Gavin’s knowledge and experience in climate science is vastly greater. Gavins guess comes from a variety of sources including computer models and paleoclimate studies.
If we were to assume that GW was not a problem then it would be equally tenuously based on your sources guesses which might be worse than Gavins.
Taz
I just “love” talk about models and their “predictive power”. Although I respect the fact that climate science isn’t trading and far more data (maybe) goes into it, I can’t tell you how many people with math and science Phds I have met in my career who would come into our office and sell us the predictive power of their models whether they be currencies or stocks! 99.9% of the models were duds. They would always walk in with a spring in their step and eventually just skulk out when asked pertinent questions about their models.]
Amazingly enough these were models were created by dudes out of really good Ivy League schools. In other words maths geniuses most of them: or close. They seemed to have everything down pat and stressed the fact that their models had been tested back with 20 years of data and they worked 60% of the time. Of course back testing is not the real McCoy and they all seemed to have reached that same conclusion.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which were duds. They nearly all were! One way of figuring out the crap was to ask them if they had tested their system with their own money. No, was always the answer.
The problem as I see it with these models is that they have far more interactions etc. than a trading model and my confidence in trading models made up by math and science Phds is a big fat zero.
So why should we have any confidence these models are any good? Well I guess we’ll know in about 100 years.
But I am surprised according to Ender no one has yet come up with answers to my issues!
Steve Munn,
Scientists should present the facts derived from their research. Individually they should not comment on or believe they are entitled to set policy. Elected governments set policy.
Joe – “So Ender, What you are really saying, other than taking a swipe at Louis, is that no one has done any reasearch on these very issues at this stage- although it’s on its way.”
Completely ignoring the other BS and I never miss taking a swipe at Louis. However there has been plenty of research however the subject is a huge one and there are many many uncertainties as you can see from the large range of guesses.
As Gavin says he thinks that further research will narrow the range rather than shifting it a large amount. We do not know what the positive feedbacks of reduced Arctic sea ice and melting permafrost will do to accelerate the warming trend.
As you are in investment then perhaps you are in a postion to clean up from your convictions. I suggest buying heaps of low lying coastal land and maybe even a South Pacific Island or two such as land on Tuvalu. As nothing is going to happen, as according to Louis the temp will rise only a couple of tenths of a degree, then the Greenland Ice sheet should be perfectly safe and you should clean up.
Me I am moving inland soon and putting up a windmill or two. If Gavin and the IPCC turn out to right then you can beg with all the other environmental refugees whose land/crops and investments have been inundated by rising sea levels and have nowhere else to go. You can find out first hand what an environmental refugee is.
Steve Munn
What train did you use this morning? If I am the CEO of campany Z I will be the only one who will talk about company affairs thank you very much, or my designate who will discuss with me what is going to be said beforehand.
You think the CSIRO should work differently. You’re just clowing around, right? That’s because no serious individual would suggest such a thing.
They can talk all they like if they resigned and set up on their own, of course.
Ender,
What guess? I made no guess,
I stimply repeated the FACT that Gavin made the guess that climate sensitity is so and so.
I said it was not a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable.
A guess Ender is not a scientific fact. That you cannot comprehend this most simple of all facts is not astonishing at all. Your answer is simply a retreat into authority, Gavin Smit.
And this is a fatal error for Ender, because you have publicly proclaimed global warming theory to be based
1. Not observed facts but
2. A guess by a climate scientist whom you appear to hold in especial regard.
Gavin’s guess is not a scientific fact, so what is it Ender?
Ender
If I need investment advice I won’t ask you thanks.
Ender says
“However there has been plenty of research however the subject is a huge one and there are many uncertainties as you can see from the large range of guesses”.
Research on what exactly?
“As Gavin says he thinks that further research will narrow the range rather than shifting it a large amount. We do not know what the positive feedbacks of reduced Arctic sea ice and melting permafrost will do to accelerate the warming trend”.
Research on what exactly? My points, or something else?.
“As you are in investment then perhaps you are in a position to clean up from your convictions. I suggest buying heaps of low lying coastal land and maybe even a South Pacific Island or two such as land on Tuvalu”
Ender, that would be a shit deal. Why?
Well the market isn’t quite pricing in the fact that my favorite holiday spot Byron Bay is going to sink into the wild blue yonder. So I would be buying at market price that hasn’t discounted your gloomy scenario. But if your prediction turns out to be correct I would have lost a bundle. So where’s the trade in that? Thanks for that piece of advice!
I’d rather buy BHP on the next downturn when I because I think that puppy is heading to a $100 sometime to 2010. It’s a little too smokey for you but it’s making oodles of cash flow.
I guess I will be seeing you on the Discovery channel soon, hey, telling us how you made the move to Alice and still able to take a morning dip in the beach. Good for you, Ender!
Ender,
once again you make a totally unsubstantiated allegation so will the readers, which of my sources produced guesses that you find so unsatisfactory?
I believe Ian Castles has picked you up on this tendency before – sweeping generalisations without supporting facts.
And what is fast becoming obvious is that you are also not learning from experience.
Never thought we’d find someone more abusive than Rog and less informed than Louis but we have.
Joe – all your questions on ice ages, warming, CO2 as food have been answered at least 10 times in previous posts. Check Jen’s climate archive first. But if you already know the answer you don’t need to bother. zzzzzzz .. ..
A crucial has been made here.
Ender has stated that climate sensitivity has been guessed to be 1.5 to 4.5 dC for a doubling of CO2.
This is a Guess and it has been assumed to be true.
What has not been scientifically tested is the initial guess or statement: “Doubling CO2 will cause a temperature change of 1.5 to 4.5 dC.”
Accepting it to be true, all else that follows will also be logically true. It is the classic case of deductive reasoning.
Starting from an untested premise, and developing a theory using that premise as a starting point.
I could also state “There is God” and accept it as my initial premise.
Like the example above this initial premise is not being tested, it is a starting point from which deduced statements are derived and tested in terms of the initial premise.
I cannot falsify the initial premise, whether it be climate sensitivity or God.
This is the essence of religion.
Come on Phil, relax. I was only kidding before. I know you two guys take everything so seriously so just cool it will ya.
Would you mind getting into my points at least I will learn sonething and who knows you may even convert me.
So let’s be pleasant to each other for a change.
Joe – “favorite holiday spot Byron Bay”
As I grew up in Byron Bay maybe I could be better advisor on land than you think. I would not presume to advise you on investment I am simply stating that if you think that there will be no large scale changes from AGW then you could be in a position to actually put your money where your mouth is. I am doing something similar and arranging my retirement plans just a bit further from the coast as I believe there will be changes.
The problem you have with computer models is legitimate and I agree with you. The people that think they can predict the stock market with some software program are fools. However if I proposed a program that sifted company data and gave a range of predictions of stock that stands a good chance of being a good investment and left it to your judgement which stocks to buy then this I am sure would be acceptable and you probably use such a system already.
In very much the same way anyone who thinks that they can predict the exact climate from computer models is equally foolish and this is why reputable scientists don’t even try. What they are used for is experiments because we do not have anything else to experiment on. The most sophisticated of them are pretty good and can give quite good guesses as to what the climate might do with various parameter changes. Further when they are really wrong that can lead to further lines of research to find out why and discover previously unknown mechanisms.
This is where some of the information for the guesses that climate scientists make about climate sensitivity.
So Louis when you do your assaying out in the Kimberley and you discover a likely ore body do you ‘guess’ at the size of it or do you use your experience and knowledge to make an fairly accurate estimate of its size? Or do you instantly know its exact size to the the last kilogram?
Louis – “once again you make a totally unsubstantiated allegation so will the readers, which of my sources produced guesses that you find so unsatisfactory?”
This guess:
“Current estimates of warming are about .12 dCelsius per decade, so 100 years time, everything else being equal, the mean global temperature “might” rise 1.2 degrees.”
“I believe Ian Castles has picked you up on this tendency before – sweeping generalisations without supporting facts.”
Perhaps Ian can take a leaf out of his own book. This thread has been shown to be a “sweeping generalisations without supporting facts” because the scientist was not writing the book on behalf of the CSIRO. This fact so far Ian has successfully dodged.
If CO2 is a heat insulator, wouldn’t we actually want more of it rather than less? In other words if the earth’s tendency is to stay iced and snowed under we would be much less likely to avoid the big chill. So shouldn’t we want more of Co2 or at the very least not worry what we a spewing out?
Joe,
You are right about one thing; Ice Age equals not good. The nub of the problem is that the world average temperature gets too hot because excess anthropogenic C02 emissions are trapping more heat energy from the sun than is being reflected back out to space by the planet. And this causes the polar regions to melt. So far your theory is seems logical – getting rid of the polar ice should prevent the onset of another ice age – but it is missing one vital fact. That is that ice and snow offer the higest albedo of all the earth’s surface areas. Albedo is a measure of reflectivity of heat energy. People who live in igloos can attest to this, as well as overnight survivors in freezing conditions who build ice-caves to keep warm.
What I am getting at is that the ice and snow covering the poles needs to be there to reflect the sun’s energy back into space, thus regulating the earth’s temperature and keeping it in the range where biomass lives well.
When the north pole melts, by the way, the huge influx of fresh water into the salt water will disrupt and slow down the north atlantic current which is the heat conveyer belt that distributed heat from the equator regions (which absorb most of the suns energy) to the north sea via the Atlantic coast of America. When this heat conveyer belt stops working then long ice ages result and this is what you wanted to avoid in the first place – that Atlantic current, it is slowing down now.
But, nice thinking on your part. It was that thought of yours that I had in the past that lead me to find out more about climate science.
Joe – goes against my better judgement but .. ..
chase down ( Hollan 2000, Berger 2002) references in http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/milankovitch.html
You’ll find the CO2 plant food discussion (and debate) under http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001107.html
Average warming is nowhere near as important as what effects will felt in the extremes, heatwaves, droughts, storm intensities, peak cyclone speeds etc. Just thinking – oh one degree isn’t much misses the point.
How’s that for nice.
Joe – the gist of the ice age stuff is a that we’re a very long way from experiencing one based on orbital theory. Least of your worries.
Joe, I think your analogies with finance sector modelling are good, if imperfect. The thing that makes financial sector modelling very difficult is that purchasing and selling decisions are often as emotional as they are rational. Climate models can theoretically concern themselves with physical laws and not worry about human emotional interactions. But the systems being modelled are so complex that fudges have to be built into the systems to make them work, meaning that while they might involve physics, they don’t represent it. They certainly don’t reproduce reality.
I think that anthropomorphic warming is probably occurring, but as you suggest, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. To have a sensible discussion on climate you need to model not just climate, but risk and financial return. No-one appears to be doing that at the moment.
Thanks Wadard, and Phil, you too
This is an email exchange I had with a climate scientist who is actually working in the field. In other words he is the real deal: A person creating models and earning his keep as a climatologist. So his opinion does count for something.
I am not going to publish his name as I want to respect his privacy, so you will have to accept my word that he is the real deal. His credentials as far as the university he attended and the research papers he has written are 1st rate.
He it is:
Name deleted
I read your deleted as much as I can to gather information about what climate change etc. As I can see you are he real deal as far as this goes because you actually work as a climate scientist.
There is a lot to digest as far as climate science goes and a great deal of it is very complex, which to be frank leaves me gasping for air. I am a currency trader by profession(?) and use basic financial related probability in my work. If you want to discuss economics I talk about it until the cows come home!
If you have time I would like to put to you a summation of conclusions I have reached about whether AGW is a real problem. The following are my ideas
The points are laid out like the following
1. AGW will mean 1 to 6 deg C over the next 100 years or so.
2. 90% of the time the world is covered in snow and ice as a result of glaciations.
3. 3 During these glaciations most little animal life can survive, while plant life goes into deep sleep
4. 4 Co2 is plant food
5. 5 Lots of CO2 around means lots of plants and animals etc.
6 Warmer weather means more plant and animal life
Could you please suggest where I am wrong with any of these points, as it would help me go off and do more homework?
Regards
Joe,
Thanks for the kind comments. There is a grain of truth in what you
wrote – a warmer planet is not in itself necessarily more hostile to
life in general, or humans in particular. However, the speed of the
change is likely to add to the various stresses that we are already
imposing on the environment. If some areas lose rainfall and others gain
it, that probably means both droughts and floods where currently we are
reasonably well-adapted to the climate. Large-scale migration and
contested redistribution of scarce resources is not going to be much
fun. Focussing on the absolute magnitude of the temperature change
itself is a little misleading, but note that almost all scientific
output is pretty explicitly geared to a 100-year time scale.
Thanks
Name deleted
The issue I have here is not he in no way is presenting a doom and gloom scenario that we read in the popular press. Most certainly it is nowhere near the scare campaign presented by 3 Corners the other evening. Yet some of you on this thread discuss threats to climate as though the end of the world is near. It would take mammoth heating burst for the poles to melt, yet it seems this guy is not even going there. In a sense he is worried about the speed but certainly not about the overall temp changes.
Other than the science, I am starting to figure that not only is warming actually a good thing, but if managed ok a vital thing for the long term prospects of an animal that needs the warmth. It gets to economics by the fact that all things are trade offs, which may possibly mean that we leave things alone observe and hope the warming will keep the cold death away from us.
As I read somewhere there was no ice in Greenland once or very little and there is no evidence of sea levels changing.
More furphies from Ian C. Ian complains about the use of statistics to support one-sided arguments. Then he breaches his own standards to make a point by comparing Australia’s ODA in 2006 with the 2004 international average. Australia has just increased its ODA as have most other nations because there have been widespread international pressures to increase ODA/GNI %.
According to the OECD, in 2004 Australia’s ODA was 0.25% of GNI. The 2004 developed country average was 0.42%, and that of the Development Assistance Committee nations was 0.25%. Therefore in 2004, Australia was well below the developed country average and right on the DAC average. There is no factual basis for Ian’s claim that Australia’s ODA is “above the donor average”.
As an internationally aware expert statistician, Ian would know how misleading it is to compare Australia’s 2006 figure with an earlier donor average, even if the source was the ABS. The OECD says “Further substantial rises in ODA are expected in 2005-6. . . the ODA/GNI ratio should improve from 0.25% in 2004 to 0.30% in 2006.”
So if in 2005-6 the average is 0.30% and Australia’s ODA is 0.28% then Australia is still not above the donor average. In saying “So far as the facts are concerned, I’ll put my money on the ABS”, Ian is backing a dark horse again.
Thinksy, Barrie Pittock’s book, published in late-2004, is being promoted around the world as a major new textbook. It says in one sentence that Australia gives FAR LESS in international aid (wrong) than the 0.22% that the industrialised world CURRENTLY GIVES (wrong), and that Australia has not SIGNED the Kyoto Protocol (also wrong, if we’re being pedantic, and irrelevant in any case). Pittock gives no source, but in notes published online by CSIRO Publishing he says that
If the ABS figures are as good as their agricultural census – pick a random number. 10 years experience with crap data.
For the viewers it should be pointed out the Barrie Pittock retired in 1999 and is a Honorary Fellow with CSIRO and that CSIRO publishing is somewhat independent from CSIRO (as it was explained to me anyway).
And Lomborg deserves a serve anyway.
Ian – I can only see that you’ve given Bazza’a book an editorial haircut which is always fine. The vast bulk of the fairly large text is spot-on – and up-to-date with things like southern annular mode effects etc.
Ian I’m starting to think your interest in climate change may be wider than the economic aspects. Are you a contrarian?
On the general question of optimism here I wonder which contributors smoke.
Correction. Barrie Pittock’s book was published in late-2005, not late-2004. The ‘Supplementary Notes’ are brought up to mid-September 2005. These notes provide the reader with links to websites with strongly-stated advocacy positions such as realclimate (p. 2), climate forum (p. 37), stop climate chaos (p. 37), Environmental Justice and Climate Change (p. 37), the Australia Institute (pps. 37, 42 and 46), the Australian Climate Group (p. 43 and 51), the Worldwatch Institute (p. 39) and the Environmental Defense Council (p. 41) . Dr. Pittock does not mention the Policy Paper ‘Uncertainty and Climate Change’, published by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in February 2005 or the House of Lords Committee Report ‘The Economics of Climate Change’, published in July 2005.
Dr. Pittock also explains that the argument regarding the validity of the SRES scenarios ‘is rather irrelevant to policy advice on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which relates more to the impact of policy-driven scenarios’ (p. 35). He appears not to have realised that the SRES scenarios were used as input into the Macquarie River study which, according to his book, produced ‘a result that has important implications for planning and policy.’
Ian are you incapable of admitting that you got something wrong? Are you capable of admitting that with your background you most definitely knew better? (Note that when you corrected a boo-boo I made in an older thread I immediately admitted that I was wrong).
Surely ignorance won’t be your excuse? Given your statistical expertise and the high level of your international awareness, you can’t expect us to believe that you were unaware that Australia and most other countries are increasing ODA/GNI? This is common knowledge.
My point has little to do with Pittock’s claims (yr 1st para in your 04:26 AM post) or AusAid (yr 2nd para). My point has everything to do with you, being a statistical expert who demands a high standard of accuracy from others, providing an inaccurate and misleading statistical comparison. Considering your expertise and given that it’s well known that ODA/GNI is increasing, how could you could compare Australia’s higher 2006 ODA goal with the lower DAC average from 2 years earlier unless you were deliberately manipulating the facts to support your argument?
It might boost your credibility if you admit to your (unthinking?) error in your critique rather than trying to hide it with smoke and mirrors. Otherwise how can you expect anyone to respect your standards or accept your critiques of other works if you make such simple errors and then refuse to admit to them?
Joe – “It would take mammoth heating burst for the poles to melt, yet it seems this guy is not even going there”
You reference from the climate scientist is good and broadly agrees with what we have been saying however the statement above is quite wrong. 4 degrees of heating is quite sufficient to start the Greenland ice sheet melting as it is now. You do not have to melt the poles even though arctic ice is disappearing rapidly.
My oulook is not all gloom and doom. I am very hopeful that we will avoid the dangerous climate change however I am hedging by bets and preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. Not assessing the risks correctly by taking account of all the data will lead to ruin at best. I look at the future as a risk assessment and would prefer to understand the risk of worst case scenerio to plan what is to be done and how I can help.
It wasn’t my comparison, Thinksy, so how can I be ‘deliberately manipulating facts’? Contrary to your statement, the 0.28% figure in the Year Book and on the AusAID website is not ‘Australia’s higher 2006 ODA GOAL’: it’s based on actual Budget appropriations for the financial year that began on 1 July 2005. It can’t validly be compared with the OECD forecast of the ODI/GNI ratio for all donors of 0.30% in the year beginning 1 January 2006 (which you wrongly said was for 2005-06 in your earlier note).
None of the figures that you’ve quoted come within a bull’s roar of validating the statement in Barrie Pittock’s book that Australia gives ‘far less’ than the donor country average of 0.22%.
You say that your point ‘has little to do with Pittock’s claims’. Exactly. You don’t seem to care that a book which the Chairman of the IPCC commends to the world as ‘a valuable reference for scientists and policymakers alike’ incorrectly names Australia as one of two countries that give ‘far less’ than ‘the industrialised world’. That’s the message that is being given to scientists, policymakers and students in environmental courses in Japan, Italy and New Zealand, although these countries have lower ODA/GNI ratios than Australia.
Joe has raised some good points that others felt the need to answer. Joe responded to my thoughts on models. Thanks.
I will offer Joe an inside view of Canberra and a few of its large organisations in relation to ongoing science and engineering. I came here in 1986 with only a suitcase still shaking from the trauma from the closing an underground tin mine and its works in the icy wilderness.
A close friend of my young family here offered me an interesting observation soon after. He had overheard the government hatchet gang at a closed PS party discussing their target organisations for “right sizing”. The order of attack but don’t quote me, went something like this, The AFP where I was then as a temp, Foreign Affairs maybe, DOTAC where I ended up, research where I had been at ANU and several others like BMR, I can’t recall.
I was directly exposed to their campaign for a decade although I tried to dodge redundancy everywhere. They were clever and used outside consultants to do their dirty work, in restructuring each place. One of my immediate bosses now deceased was an independent, he had a reputation as long as a pick handle. His routine was less subtle. I filled holes in his team after a coffee in the car park.
My late wife, another technician and our chief handy man both lived at Woomera through the British nuclear tests. Climate, atmosphere and huge feral cats were big discussion points, likewise people who whinged on the job. Their relationship and insights helped my PS career but only for a short time.
Soon after I left that job I met Gwen Andrews in her new capacity under Kimbo and another veteran RAAF man. We were all restructured again, and again. I walked right into the consultants. In all government policy development there is no time for the practical.
Once, our counterparts went to Antarctica in between supporting ongoing work at say Defence, or Customs. Very few technical officers remain in any of the above, particularly CSIRO.
Ian you’re trying to split hairs with a blunt rusty axe. I referred to Australia’s 2006 ODA GNI percentage of 0.28% as “higher” because it’s an increase on previous years, therefore it’s HIGHER. According to the OECD, in 2006 Australia’s ODA is 0.28% of GNI and the DAC average is 0.30%. Are you claiming the OECD is wrong?
I didn’t say that you yourself provided this comparison did I? However, you used those figures to make a point and you undoubtedly knew better. As a prominent expert in statistics who criticses the assumptions of others, and with your intimate experience of the ABS, you have no excuse for hinging your arguments on dodgy comparisons, regardless of their source. It’s cowardly of you to refuse to admit to this, and it undermines whatever credibility you may have had left.
You say I don’t validate Pittock’s statement. I’ve already made it clear that was not my point so you can bury that lame protest.
The point that you’re trying to dodge is that you, being a statistical expert who demands a high standard of accuracy from others, knowingly compared apples to oranges to support your argument, ie you provided an inaccurate and misleading statistical comparison. Despite it being common knowledge that ODA/GNI is increasing both internationally and for Australia, you compared Australia’s higher 2006 ODA figure with a lower, older international average.
You choose your preferred defence: this is either uncharisteric ignorance, a careless oversight, or a deliberate manipulation of the facts to support your argument. No doubt you will continue with the gutless, disingenious path by refusing to address this matter directly. You’re fooling few other than yourself, rather, you’re undermining your own credibility by trying to obfuscate a (deliberately?) misleading statistical reference.
Posted for Phil
………………………….
Where does the Royal Society fit in?
See the submission by the Royal Society to the Stern Review
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?year=&id=4138
In particular the last para:
The Stern Review should provide a valuable contribution to the discussion about how we minimise and adapt to climate change. And while these decisions will ultimately be informed by social, economic and political considerations, it is absolutely vital that this review bases its economic analyses of climate change on sound science. In this way it will avoid the mistakes of last year’s climate change report by the House of Lord’s Select Committee on Economic Affairs which, because of a lack of scientific expertise, provided a highly selective and unrepresentative focus on some uncertainties in current knowledge.
Phil
…………………………
Posted for Phil
I’m late to the party, but here are a couple of points with regards to potential temperature rise:
– The estimates are for 1.5 to 4.5C for a doubling of CO2. In the last century CO2 rose by 31% and the temperature rose 0.6C. Temperature rise with increasing CO2 is logarithmic, which means that most of the rise occurs early on. The current evidence suggests that we must be heading towards the lower end of the estimates (if not below).
– The percentage of CO2 when the dinosaurs roamed the earth was 10 times higher than it is today. so yes Joe you are correct, more CO2 equals more precipitation, more growth and not an arid desert like many would have us believe.
I think we have cruised past a very important issue. That is, Pittock has only provided electronic references which can be revised, reworked, re-spun and even deleted in a format that provides no record of fact at the point of publication.
And in ten years time who knows what will be there. How will someone in the future be able to confirm or deny the veracity of a claim if the evidence is under continual revision?
It betrays an underlying contempt for the reader and is the first refuge of the dishonest.
It is a bit like hiring a person solely on the basis of the url for his personal web site. He could make any wild claims as to his past experience to actually get the job and then replace them later with the corrected work history so no-one could substantiate a claim of fabrication.
I have said before of the NGGI itself, and it seems to be the case for Pittock, that they have no idea of the importance of a “record of fact” in true and fair reporting.
Pittock is essentially asking us to make an intellectual “transaction” without providing a receipt. Caveat emptor.
Ian – “In the last century CO2 rose by 31% and the temperature rose 0.6C which means that most of the rise occurs early on”
Your conclusion is not really correct. There is a lag in temperature rise and global dimming has lowered what would have been a larger rise. The rise also is not quite logarithmic and most pudits put the sensitivity at more like 3 degrees.
“However, Lindzen is undoubtedly well aware (having written papers on the subject i.e. Lindzen, GRL, 2002) that lags in the surface temperature due to ocean thermal inertia imply that the transient response is always smaller than the equilibrium response, and that additionally, there are other forcings in the system (specifically land-use change and aerosols) that counteract the forcing from greenhouse gases alone.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=222#more-222
“The percentage of CO2 when the dinosaurs roamed the earth was 10 times higher than it is today”
This is an example of skeptic misinformation. This is more like what could have been the picture:
“At the peak of the dinosaur era, there were no polar ice caps, and sea levels are estimated to have been from 100 to 250 metres (330 to 820 feet) higher than they are today. The planet’s temperature was also much more uniform, with only 25 degrees Celsius separating average polar temperatures from those at the equator. On average, atmospheric temperatures were also much warmer; the poles, for example, were 50 °C warmer than today. [33][34]
The atmosphere’s composition during the dinosaur era was vastly different as well. Carbon dioxide levels were up to 12 times higher than today’s levels, and oxygen formed 32 to 35 percent of the atmosphere, as compared with 21 percent today. However, by the late Cretacious, the environment was changing dramatically. Volcanic activity was decreasing, which led to a cooling trend as levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide dropped. Oxygen levels in the atmosphere also started to fluctuate and would ultimately fall considerably. Some scientists hypothesize that climate change, combined with lower oxygen levels, might have led directly to the demise of many species. If the dinosaurs had respiratory systems similar to those commonly found in modern birds, it may have been particularly difficult for them to cope with reduced respiratory efficiency, given the enormous oxygen demands of their very large bodies”
We do not know whether in fact the high CO2 level contributed to the dinosaur’s demise or was a symptom of changed climatic conditions that spelt the end. It is very dangerous to assume that higher CO2 means more plant growth and warmer conditions mean better living conditions.
Thinksy, As stated in my original post, quoting from Year Book Australia 2006, ‘the donor average in the latest year available (2004), was 0.25%.’ The OECD has made a PROJECTION that the donor average in 2006 will be 0.30%. The reason for more than half of the increase between the two years is that ‘a temporary spike in aid levels is expected because of major debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria’.
As forgiving debt doesnt impose a resource cost on the countries concerned and the debt relief was all in 2005 and 2006, OECD comparisons for these years are misleading as indicators of the longer-term trend.
Thus the statement in Minister Downers press release of 10 May 2005 that
Ender,
Most of the 0.6C temperature rise in from the first part of the century before 1950. The oceans have had some time to catch up. It is pretty obvious that the delay is a convenient way to explain away the difference after-the-fact (even though most temperature change in this century occured before 1950).
In terms of dinosaurs, my point is that the greenhouse effect would be at its maximum at that time. There was more CO2 and more water vapor in the atmosphere at that time then there is now (much much more), and the earth did not go into a runaway greenhouse effect or anything ridiculous like that. In fact the earth thrived. I only use this point to illustrate the upper limit, not to advocate it 😉
We have had a 30% increase in CO2. Many people feel we have reached peak oil or are near it, which means we are halfway and so CO2 may increase by another 30% (using the initial base), or 60% overall. Since a doubling of CO2 leads to 1.5 to 4.5C change, and the sensitivity is logarithmic, then a 60% change will lead to less than 0.75 to 2.25C change. Picking the middle would give us a 1.5C change, probably nothing to panic about. This of course assumes the climate models are correct about positive feedback forces being more powerful than negative feedback — which is definitely a point of dispute (climate models don’t know how to handle clouds, so they just have to ‘guess’), which means they are probably wrong 😉
But, let’s say you’re right. Say there is a huge delay built in because of the oceans, and let’s assumes that sensitivity is ‘almost’ logarithmic. That means that even if we cut CO2 production to 0 tomorrow they will still experience the majority of the temperature increase. Since even the harshest cutbacks would still see us release 80% of the CO2 we would have without cutbacks, why bother debating? 20% or less in a logarithmically sensitive model will have almost no effect. So if the alarmists are correct — congratulations, there is nothing we can do about it, or as history as a guide if the alarmists are incorrect, then a lot of resources will be wasted fighting a losing battle.
My math is wrong in calculating the temperatures given a 60% increase in CO2 (was too lazy to pull out a calculator). The temperatures would be higher because of the logarithmic sensitivity.
Why obsess over an “x” degree rise in temperature.
The real questions are more like: what happens to peak tropical cyclone/hurricane/typhoon speed; what happens to extreme rainfall events; what species and diseases can move where in range; heatwave frequencies and the biggie – who wins and loses in the more rain/less rain – drought balance. Will there be an effect on El Nino?
In the southern hemisphere – our anti-cyclone paths seem to have changed – is this an interaction between greenhouse and Antarctic circulations.
Saying – “oh well if tomorrow is just degree warmer I can cope with that” misses the point IMHO.
The world is already beset by droughts and floods which cause misery to millions and economic impacts in the billions. With growing populations the risks are even more so. Anything that gives us better resolution or forewarning on phenomena like El Nino is surely worth investigating.
P.S. On the dinosaur era angle – who knows what orbital forcings were doing to heating and cooling of the planet. Continental configurations (Pangea, Gondwanaland etc) we would have had were very different. The planet’s land masses and oceans were nothing like what they were today.
Ian – no it didn’t then however it almost did in the Eocene:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
and even possibly the Permian extinction
http://permian-triassic-extinction-event.iqnaut.net/
so thermal events are possible however they are remote.
Oil based transport only account for a 30% of emissions so Peak Oil will not give the required cuts. Indeed it may, if we continue on without changes, increase emissions as the ‘acceptable’ alternatives such as Tar Sands and coal to liquids emit more CO2 than oil.
“But, let’s say you’re right. Say there is a huge delay built in because of the oceans, and let’s assumes that sensitivity is ‘almost’ logarithmic. That means that even if we cut CO2 production to 0 tomorrow they will still experience the majority of the temperature increase”
Unfortunately you are absolutely right and really I think I debate sometimes out of reflex. It is what was said in 1990 – action then could have possibly made a difference. 60% to 80% cuts now in emissions now could keep warming under 2 degrees however no-one really knows. However I advocate changing transport to electric and plug in hybrid as an wedge to further increases in renewable energy. With Australia independant of outside energy then we will be better placed to maintain our social order and technology if the alarmists are correct. Any country that changes to a less vunerable distributed energy distribution with local renewable generation and electric transportation will weather the storm better than countries still in the 1890 technology mindset.
I find it interesting that people are so concerned about possible disasters and possible deaths 100 years from now. What about current disasters (such as millions dying in Africa because of malaria, AIDs, starvation and war)? What about current deaths? We could spend trillions of dollars trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem and that’s likely is beyond our control OR we could spend that money helping real people with very real problems right now.
All of those who are so concerned about global warming — how much money have you donated to charity to help out such people? I donated $500 last year and I don’t make that much money, what did you guys do, or are you only concerned about possible future deaths and suffering rather than the real deaths and sufferring today?
Where is the best place to spend our money is what I am saying. I advocate spending money on the known, not the theoretical.
Can’t quite believe that so much energy has been expended on this web site by people scoring points. I have no doubt that we are in an arena where the science is, to say the least, uncertain and hardly to be proved by statistical analysis alone – the raw data may or may not be relevant.
However the initial point of Ian’s critique of the 4 Cnrs program made sense. I go on being surprised that IC seems to be in the thrall of the fashionable and prevailing free market system. Where, I may ask, has the public good gone?
A long time since days at the Nicholas institution in St kilda Road!
Ender,
Actually it sounds like we are pretty close to agreement.
Ian – “I find it interesting that people are so concerned about possible disasters and possible deaths 100 years from now”
Because I have kids. I really do not want to give them a degraded world. I would rather leave a legacy of renewable energy that can be sustained for the long run rather than for just a while.
We are in general agreement the main disagreement is where to spend the money. To ignore Peak Oil is stupid as our global economy will collapse without timely alternatives. Fixing Peak Oil with electric transport eliminates 30% of the emissions so it is a good start. None of the humanitarian aid to the 3rd world can continue without oil and technology. Also it makes little sense to cure people of diseases only to have them made homeless by climate change. It is obvious that we need to do both because the risk of climate change is real as is the risk of Bird Flu or AIDS pandemics. Not mitigating global warming could undo the humanitarian aid that is done by depriving people of rainfall and land.
The risk of climate change is not theoretical only the magnitude is unknown. Where there is a risk money spent can be justified.
Actually I think that we should move to alternatives also (more because of peak oil then greenhouse affect). However I think that we can’t avoid nuclear. I havn’t done the math, but I don’t think it is possible to generate enough energy with windpower, solar, etc. I think we need to accept nuclear as a solution.
Hello John Collins. Thanks for your posting. I have to admit I can’t remember you at the Nicholas institution, but that’s only because I don’t have a good memory, and you obviously have.
I don’t know why you have the impression that I’m ‘in the thrall of the fashionable and prevailing free market system’ and not in favour of support for ‘public goods’. Quite the contrary. In fact, it’s ironic that you should have made this comment in the context of an argument about whether CSIRO scientists are free to express their opinions on policy issues, because I was very concerned about the strong publicly stated position in opposition to public good research of a former CSIRO Deputy Chief Executive Executive, Dr. Colin Adam.
In 1999 Dr. Adam said at a National Academies Forum conference that:
‘One aspect of globalisation is that CSIRO has become more like a high-technology company than a university. The research of many Australian universities is not yet competitive. We have to ask: is the Australian community getting a reasonable return on its investment in these universities?’
Dr. Adam went on to ask why academics could not sell the products of their research as CSIRO was increasingly doing, and urged academics to ‘talk to their colleagues in business schools. What strikes me is that many Australian academics are naive in business.’
As Vice President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA), I drafted the Academy’s submission on Minister Kemp’s Discussion Paper on Higher Education Research and Training. The submission registered strong disagreement with the views of Dr. Adam and outlined the case for public good research, drawing heavily on a paper by Professor Peter Dixon of Monash University. I’ll quote from the conclusion of the paper, because it’s highly relevant to the issues being debated on this thread:
‘This suggests that a key objective of the reformed research funding arrangements in the higher education sector should be to enhance support for policy-related ‘public good’ research in Australian universities, and to facilitate its transmission to governments and the wider community. A possible model would be to have an Australian counterpart to Britain’s ESRC Macroeconomic Modelling Bureau directed by Professor Ken Wallis at the University of Warwick and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The Academy suggests that consideration be given to applying this principle to research funding in a range of fields. Within designated areas of research of a ‘public good’ kind, grant recipients could be required to ensure that research outputs remained in the public domain.’
Those sentences must strike a chord with anyone who has been following the debate over the ‘hockey stick’. In recent times Peter Dixon has worked on the problems of long term modelling, especially in the context of emissions scenarios. He presented a major paper on this subject at a modellers’ conference in Lubeck last June, and it has since been published, following peer review in the same journal that has published most of the papers in which the Castles & Henderson critique has been developed. Barrie Pittock does not mention Professor Dixon’s work in his book or in his ‘supplementary notes.’ I don’t know whether he even knows that Peter has worked on the subject.
Ian – who decides ‘public good’. This debate is about a government that equates ‘public good’ with ‘government political good’ and acts accordingly. Public good is not necessarily current government policy.
Ender, This debate is about whether or not CSIRO scientists are free to speak publicly, including by expressing views that may be in conflict with government policies. Rightly or wrongly, I and my colleagues at ASSA interpreted the public comments of Dr. Adam as one of opposition to the government’s policy of funding research of a kind that did not yield a reasonable commercial return on the investment.
You ask who decides ‘public good’. I can best answer by quoting from the paper by Peter Dixon upon which I drew in drafting the ASSA submission:
‘The defining characteristic of a public good is that members of a community cannot be excluded from enjoying benefits from it.
‘To make a public-good argument for government support, scientists must show that (i) the products of their research cannot be sold because of lack of excludability, and (ii) that the community places sufficient value on these products to be willing to pay for them via taxation.
‘Areas in which public-good arguments can be made include greenhouse research, research on the origins of the universe, archaeology and analysis of the arms race.
‘An argument for public funding of research can be made if there is a need for public exposure of the details of discoveries and these discoveries can be copied easily. In the social sciences, there is often a need to expose data collection and estimation methods to detailed peer review, Once exposed, these can be copied with sufficient variations to make copyright protection impossible. Thus, left to market forces, research of this type is likely to be underperformed.’
I hope that it’s obvious from that that public good is not necessarily current government policy. I’d be interested to know whether you agree with the examples that ASSA gave of areas of research which might qualify for public funding. Do you agree, for example, that archeology should be funded without expecting that the researchers can earn a commercial return on the product of their research?
It is a pertinent example, because in the same year as Dr Adam was questioning the need for public good research at Australian universities, the ANU closed its Department of Archaeology. According to Dr. Robin Williams, FAA, of ABC Science show fame, “Few examples of demise can be so stupefying as that of the research department of archaeology at the Australian National University. It has had the most profound influence on contemporary Australian, as well as international, affairs as almost any group imaginable.
Who do you think was right, Ender? Dr. Adam, who would have said that the department was not internationally competitive; or Robin Williams, who measured the product of the department in terms of influence rather than money?
“I find it interesting that people are so concerned about possible disasters and possible deaths 100 years from now. What about current disasters (such as millions dying in Africa because of malaria, AIDs, starvation and war)? What about current deaths? We could spend trillions of dollars trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem and that’s likely is beyond our control OR we could spend that money helping real people with very real problems right now.
or are you only concerned about possible future deaths and suffering rather than the real deaths and sufferring today?
Where is the best place to spend our money is what I am saying. I advocate spending money on the known, not the theoretical.”
Ian Castles, you have it in one. Anyone with half a brain and an ounce of commons sense would agree with you in an instant. All the piffling nonsense and point scoring that goes on in pseudo scientific blogs such as this gets reduced to its essential element with your comments above. The dominant basis for assessemnt can can only ever be value for money now.
Ian – I am not sure from your post where Dr Adams fits in here. My position is that the CSIRO should be completely free of Government influence and allowed to conduct any research, commercial or otherwise, that its governing board of scientists sees fit. I think that I am in agreement with you however by your last post your position is slightly ambiguous. Wasn’t Dr Adams arguing that research should be done whatever its commercial value? To that I would agree as there is vast areas of research like the ones you mentioned that need to be done whatever the commercial benefits. Public good can be assured by public outreach programs to communicate the findings in new and interesting ways.
Ian I have shown your statement that Australia’s ODA is “above the donor average” to be wrong in no uncertain terms yet you refuse to admit that you used the facts in a misleading way to support an inaccurate statement. A prominent person with your unequalled expertise in statistics making an obviously misleading comparison and blaming the source? Please don’t be so insulting as to try to stretch my argument to infer insults to Downer who used that data in a relatively straightforward way. You used the data for an entirely different purpose to Downer. Yours was misleading, unless your statistical standards permit comparisons between apples and oranges.
I have not said (as you have inferred) that it’s inaccurate to say that Australia’s 2006 ODA/GNI of 0.28% is above the 2004 DAC donor average of 0.25 %. Rather, knowing that the international average has increased, you compared different target years with moving averages to refute a point that Australia’s 2006 ODA is below the average. Further, you said Australia’s ODA is “above the donor average”. This is just plain wrong.
Pittock said Australia’s ODA/GDP is far less than that of the industrialised world. You countered it by comparing Australia’s 2005-6 ODA/GNI to that of DAC donors in 2004. It’s astounding that you can’t admit this comparison is a misleading basis for your conclusion. You could have simply acknowledged my point but instead you’re putting on a smoke and mirrors show. It’s quite an insight into your character. You demand the highest standard of accuracy in statistical and economic methods by others: Would you be satisfied if the IPCC excused an inaccurate assumption because the source should be reliable and the data is accurate in one manner of speaking, besides it has been been used by other prominent people, therefore they can’t be held accountable? Of course not, but that’s the essence of your arguments.
Despite it being common knowledge that ODA/GNI is increasing both internationally and for Australia, you compared Australia’s increased 2006 ODA figure with a lower, older international average and said that this places “Australia above the donor average”. Australia’s 2004 ODA was 0.25% of GNI. The 2004 developed country average was 0.42%, and that of the Development Assistance Committee nations was 0.25%. So Pittock was correct to say that Australia’s ODA was far less than that of the industrialised world: 0.25% is far less than 0.42%. You may argue, pedantically as you’re prone to do, that it’s less but perhaps not far less. Regardless, it is less, not more as you said. Australia’s ODA may approach the average for the DAC countries, but it is still does not support your bold claim that Australia is “above the donor average”. How can you expect to have credibility in providing objective or reliable critiques of the assumptions of the IPCC when you yourself simply cannot admit to such a minor error in assumptions that you used in a misleading fashion to support an inaccurate point?
100 years time for impacts?
Look at how much climate chaos we have now?
What would you say its worth in terms of human suffering and economic losses.
Thinksy, You say “The 2004 developed country average was 0.42%, and that of the Development Assistance Committee nations was 0.25%. So Pittock was correct to say that Australia’s ODA was far less than that of the industrialised world: 0.25% is far less than 0.42%.”
For a start, Pittock said that the average for the industrialised world was 0.22%, not 0.42%. So if you are right his book which according to Dr. Pachauri ‘provides information and analysis that will greatly assist and guide decision makers’ understates the industrialised world’s aid figure by 50%.
That is a pretty serious error. Could you please provide the source for your claim that ‘the 2004 developed country average was 0.42%?
But of course in terms of errors the Royal Society is critical of the House of Lord’s Select Committee on Economic Affairs which, because of a lack of scientific expertise, provided a highly selective and unrepresentative focus on some uncertainties in current knowledge.
As cited above.
So at what point are we moving on?
Starting to sound like contrarian defence positioning to me.
i.e. let he who is without sin .. ..
Phil, The link that you said was to the Royal Society’s submission to the Stern Review (in the message that Jennifer posted for you at 10.59 am today) isn’t to the Society’s submission but to a press statement issued by the RS. The claim that the Lords Select on Economic Affairs lacked scientific expertise and provided a selective and unrepresentative focus on some uncertainties in public knowledge comes from one Terry Barker, an economist who’s a member of the RS’s energy policy group.
The RS’s submission is posted on the Stern Review website, and it doesn’t say what Terry Barker is reported as saying in the press statement, let alone provide evidence in support. (The PR section of the RS seems to be a law unto itself. Last July the RS issued a statement on climate change which was stated to be on behalf of a number of Academies, but was promptly disowned by the US and Russian national academies).
Dr. Barker had a hard time of it before the Lords Committee, and in my view his evidence was not strong. For example, he said that ‘mitigation becomes far more important than adaptation because mitigation reduces the risks through the whole system, whereas adaptation only reduces the risks at the end, after it has all happened.
Lord Nigel Lawson politely disagreed, arguing that ‘climate change is a thing which is very gradual over a very long period of years, that is what we are told. Therefore, there is plenty of time to adapt. Farmers can adapt with different seeds, slightly different crops, to changing climatic conditions, that is what farmers always do. Sea defences can be gradually built up.’ In my opinion, Dr. Barker’s response to Lord Lawson’s incisive questioning was not impressive.
Barker was a Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 9 of the WGIII Contribution to the IPCC Third Assessment Report. This chapter is notable in that it actually cited the System of National Accounts 1993 in the text, though it erroneously described it as the ‘UN’ System (it was actually published jointly by the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD and the Commission of the European Communities) and they forgot to include it in the list of references. I can’t understand those who adopt statisticians’ concepts and then ignore the advice of statisticians about what they mean.
The Royal Society is one of the sponsors of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Austria which houses one of the main SRES modelling groups. So it could well be under RS influence that the IPCC was led to make its ill-fated decision to dismiss the Castles & Henderson critique and stick with the discredited exchange rate-converted basis of measuring output which all self-respecting economists have long since discarded.
The last economist that the RS elected to its membership was Jevons, in 1870, so after 130 years the Society’s economic capacity is wearing a bit thin. (Incidentally, Jevons was probably elected not because he was one of the great economists of the day, but because of his work on Australian climatology while he was an assayer at the Sydney branch of the Royal Mint in the 1850s and his later invention and exhibition before the RS of a proto-computer, which is currently on display at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney).
I think it’s a sad reflection on the RS that they pay lip service to the notion of interdisciplinarity in climate research but don’t take economics seriously. In this respect the RS doesn’t compare favourably with the Royal Society of Canada, which has elected some of Canada’s most eminent economists to its ranks.
Weeeelllll.. .. maybe a bt more than that.
We’ve been here before. Stoat (aka William Connolly has made a vigorous commentary at http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/07/house-of-lords-subverted-by-skeptics.html
– the MSU satellite data issue alone is fairly significant.
Hence my comment asbout moving on .. ..
And further RC just today giving Lindzen a bit of stick over his HoL testimony.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=222#more-222
Ian I gave the source for my figures the first time: the OECD. (url blocked but a search will get you there instantly). These OECD figures could well be more recent than Pittock’s figures. I don’t know the year or the source of his data, do you? His data might be correct as a reference to industrialised countries and *GDP* in the year and from the source they were provided. Regardless, the data that I’ve provided supports Pittock’s claim that Australia’s ODA ratio is less than that of industrialised nations. Whether or not it is ‘far less’ is largely a matter of perception.
The key point: Your incorrect statement that Australia’s ODA/GNI is **greater** than the donor countries’ average, as I’ve repeated several times above. You still haven’t addressed this directly. I recommend that you retract (or substantiate if you can) your own inaccurate statement (without blaming the source) before you get too carried away accusing Pittock of “a pretty serious error” – surely you don’t want a reputation for having double standards, being a sloppy with the data to back your arguments and then refusing to admit to the inaccuracy?
Thanks Phil. I’m trying to understand how the HoL report on ‘The Economics of Climate Change’ can be seriously weakened because ‘MSU satellite data is fairly significant.’ Can you enlighten me?
Thinksy, I didn’t accuse Pittock of ‘a pretty serious error.’ I said ‘IF YOU [Thinksy] ARE RIGHT his book understates the industrialised world’s aid figure by 50%. THAT is a pretty serious error.’ Youre not right, and Dr. Pittock didnt understate the industralised worlds aid figure by 50%. In fact, he didnt understate it at all.
Yes I do know the year of his data: 2002. Yes I do know the source of the data, which he gives in his ‘Supplementary Notes and References’ as an article in ‘Tiempo Climate Newsweek. Yes his article is correct in its reference to industrialised countries: it says ‘The industrialized world currently gives about 0.22 per cent of GDP.’ But as Ive already said the article doesn’t mention Australia, and so there is no source for Pittock’s claim that this country gives ‘far less’ than 0.22 per cent of GDP in aid. That claim IS an error. End of story.
Thank you for agreeing that Minister Downer ‘used that data in a relatively straightforward way.’ His actual words were ‘Australia’s ODA/GNI ratio is estimated at 0.28 per cent for 2005-06, placing Australia above the 2004 donor average of 0.25 per cent’. My actual words were ‘The ratio of Australia’s ODA to gross national income for 2005-06 is estimated at 0.28%, placing Australia above the donor average which, in the latest year available (2004), was 0.25%.’
They’re virtually the same words. I’m at a loss to understand how you can say that Mr. Downer’s statement is straightforward but that mine is dodgy, misleading, a furphy, inaccurate, reflects uncharacteristic ignorance, reflects careless oversight and is a deliberate manipulation of the facts to support my argument . Give me a break.
Your notion that ‘the 2004 developed country average was 0.42% and that of the Development Assistance Committee nations was 0.25%’ is a nonsense, because the developed countries ARE the DAC nations.
I won’t answer you again, Thinksy, unless someone else who’s been following this discussion believes that I have a point to answer.
Ian – this sentence –
apparent divergences between land-based temperature records and satellite-based measurements, the latter showing some cooling rather than warming in recent years.. ..?
is not correct science.
I think Lindzen’s evidence as discussed in link above and the M&M issues also leave much to be desired in a “balanced” review. Hence the House of Skeptics tag.
But as I said “let he who is without sin throw the first stone”
So at what point do we move on to PRODUCTIVELY further this debate.
I think the 1-4 degree emphasis understates the case as I have discussed above.
And the climate variability we have now causes misery to millions and economic damage in the billions. e.g. El Nino etc
We have changes to southern hemispheric circulation now which have caused east coast drying trends and drying in SW WA. There is some evidence to suggest that this is a feature of changes in the Antarctic Southern Annular Mode combined with greenhouse. Ozone & greenhouse.
This combined with Australia being the epicentre of El Nino impact, along with billions spent across the nation in drought aid, and most urban water supplies in crisis are good reasons for Australians to be concerned about the future.
We also have increasing amounts of coastal infrastructure at ongoing and increasing risk from storm surge and tropical cyclones. The Cairns hospital is on the Esplanade.
Pundits would have noticed the intensities of Zoe, Nancy, Vance and Ingrid.
These are all good reasons to do better on this issue. And for scientists, policy makers, politicians, ecologists, agriculturalists and economists to get their collective acts together and fingers out.
Phil. The House of Lords Committee report did not say that the statement you quoted was correct science. It is one of a list of ‘doubts expressed about features of the accepted science’, and all that the Committee said was that ‘WE HEARD [these] doubts expressed.’ The immediately succeeding sentences, after the listing of the doubts, say that ‘We do not propose to evaluate these doubts, nor are we qualified to do so. We are also awsre that climate scientists who adhere to the human-induced warming hypothesis have responses to most of these sources of doubt.’
This last statement carried a footnote reference which reads ‘An excellent description of most of these debates is to be found in M Maslin, ‘Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.’
The question I asked, Phil, was why a report on ‘The Economics of Climate Change’ should be considered to be seriously weakened by an incorrect statement about climate change science. If the best that you can do is criticise the Committee for saying that doubts had been expressed in evidence before them, and that they (the Committee) wouldn’t evaluate them and were not qualified to do so, I am confirmed in my view that the Committee have no case to answer and that their report is quite exceptionally good.
I saw your posting referring to the House of Sceptics jibe after my last post. If I am understanding your argument correctly, a ‘balanced’ review must exclude all reference even to the existence of alternative views that have been put before it.
Professor Lindzen gave evidence to the Committee. The Committee summarised the main point of his evidence, summarised their understanding of the scientific response and immediately said ‘We recognise that there is a strong majority view on climate change.’ Are you seriously alleging that this is unbalanced?
Ian – “We are also awsre that climate scientists who adhere to the human-induced warming hypothesis have responses to most of these sources of doubt.'”
They do not have ‘responses’ Ian they have what they regard as the correct scientific view. If the House of Lords proposed that there was doubt about evolution then scientists would respond equally with the currently correct scientific ideas that most if not all scientists agree to.
The problem with M&M, Lindzen et al is that they are the tiny minority with contrary views getting an unequal hearing at the House of Lords out of all proportion to their importance in the scientific debate. They are using wedge tactics to raise the profile of the skeptic movement so as the general public, including the House of Lords who are unqualified, think that the scientific community is split 50-50 on the issue. The reality is that the scientific community is actually split about 99.9-.1 toward the view that AGW and climate change are serious problems.
Ian, call the OECD figures nonsense if you will, but the OECD states that the 2004 **average** donor ODA/GNI was 0.42%. You compare apples to oranges. Comparing Australia’s increased 2006 ratio with the lower 2004 total DAC ratio is a misleading comparison on which to claim that Australia gives above the donor average. Australia’s 2006 ODA/GNI of 0.28% is less than the 2004 donor average of 0.42% AND less than the 2006 total DAC ODA/GNI of 0.30%. Clearly it is not correct to say that Australia gives above the donor average. It’s incredible how you keep trying to defend your inaccurate statement.
You still have not substantiated your statement that Australia’s ODA is “above the donor average”.
An honourable man would justify his statement or retract it, not throw up clouds of dust. You won’t answer me again, as you declared, because you can’t justify your statement without making a misleading comparison between moving figures from different target years and you’re incapable of admitting that you should retract the misleading statement.
How could anyone regard the inundation of Byron Bay as anything but a ‘public good’? Not moving to Uki are you Ender?
Ian – swamping yuppies could be considered a good thing and may return Byron to the sleepy country town that I grew up in before Hoges moved in. However the south-west of WA looks good at the moment.
Ian – I assume you guys did your very best. Criticisms have been made – perhaps fairly or unfairly. Views accepted, rejected or confirmed. But we should move on.
Phil, I’m having trouble understanding your argument. This morning I pointed out that the Lords Committee had recognised that there was ‘a strong majority view on climate change’, but within an hour you were claiming that the House of Lords, who are unqualified, think that the scientific community is split 50-50 on the issue.’ Are you suggesting that they have not said what they think? Or that they are so unqualified that they don’t realise that a strong majority is more than 50%?
I’m also mystified that you’re calling for the debate to ‘move on’ in the very same posts as you revert yet again to the ‘vigorous commentary’ in the course of which William Connelly (sic – he ticks ME off from the other side of the world when I misspell his name) accuses their Lordships of ‘bald-faced lying’ (your post of 9.46 pm yesterday). This morning you’d returned to your ‘at what point do we move on PRODUCTIVELY’ mode, and by early this afternoon you were telling an ‘Ian” (I don’t know whether it’s Ian Mott or me) that views have been ‘accepted rejected or confirmed’ and ‘we should move on.’
I don’t know what views have been accepted, rejected or confirmed by whom, but for the sake of trying to ‘move on’ let me ask whether you or anyone else who may wish to comment rejects the Lords Committee view in support of ‘a dispassionate, evidence-based approach to decision-making.’
Ian Castles – it was Ender that made the 50:50 claim not me.
I simply pointed out that there had been some objections to the Lords assessment of the science (Connolloy, Realclimate etc) , to which you have responded. Response received and read.
The Connolloy information was added in response to you suggesting that the Royal Society has little basis to criticise the Lords on their science assessment. i.e. I reminded there had been some dissenting views.
The “accepted, rejected and confirmed” was an aside to that there are various opinions depending on who you listen to.
I am simply saying – OK enough !! – we’ve done the debate now. Let us move on productively as we are already at risk already from climate variability impacts. Australia has much at stake. Let’s not bog down in arguing out to 6 decimal places who was exactly right and wrong on every point and twist of every debate. Let us move forward with learnings made. That moving forward is improving the climate science assessments and associated economic and ecological analyses with the best existing and up-to-date information.
Thanks Phil. Apologies for getting you and Ender mixed up.
Of course I’m all in favour of basing the climate science assessments and (of special interest to me) the associated economic and ecological analyses on the best existing and up-to-date information. I wouldn’t otherwise have travelled to Amsterdam in the middle of the northern winter to participate at the IPCC’s invitation in an Expert Meeting on their emissions scenarios.
However, the IPCC decided that it didn’t have time to redo its socio-economic scenarios and that it will reuse the ones that were commissioned ten years ago for their assessment to be published next year. Not surprisingly, the Lords Committee were disturbed at this.
The scenarios are entirely useless as a support for decision-making: to take one example, the B1 scenario assumes that the income per head of the population of India in 2005 (last year) would be HIGHER than the income per head of the population of China. On the other hand, the B2 scenario assumes that the income per head of Indians would be LESS THAN 40% of Chinese in 2005 (these figures are on the downscaled database at Columbia University New York which I’ve already cited). Obviously they can’t both be right and in fact they are both wrong by a large margin.
This isn’t a matter of arguing out to 6 decimal places who is exactly right or wrong. Here the IPCC is basing socio-economic analyses on estimates for LAST YEAR which were prepared nearly ten years ago, and which have already been overtaken. No self-respecting medium sized business would consider basing its long-term plans on forecasts that had already been overtaken by events, so it is a pity that in this area the IPCC has decided not to ‘move forward with learnings made.’ So far as the economic statistics community is concerned, this makes it very difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to bring greater rigour into the assessment process.
Is the reason they have not taken your advice on board (a) blunt stubbornness/bad politics (b) inadequate budget to make the computer runs (c) not enough time to make the computer modelling runs (d) they don’t agree (e) they agree but don’t think it will make enough difference.
Do you have an insight into their reasons?
Cannot a letter be written to the head of the UN by the Lords at this late stage?
I think reason (c) probably comes closest to explaining the position now. I really don’t know whether they now think it makes a difference all not. So far as I know, no expert in economic statistics was selected for the writing team of any of the relevant chapters of Working Groups II and III. As an indication of the scale of the difference potentially arising from the use of flawed data in impact assessments, I’ll paste in a letter from me which was published in the Canberra Times last Tuesday.
[Letter begins]
You report Professor Tony McMichael of the Australian National University as saying in a paper published in ‘The Lancet’ that the average world temperature had been ‘predicted’ to increase by ‘up to 5.8 degrees’ by 2100 (“Climate change to hit health: researchers”, February 10, p. 3).
This is not so. The 5.8 degrees number came out of modelling simulations in which researchers developed ‘storylines’ (their word) of imaginary futures in which, for example, the entire global population became far richer than the richest countries in the world today.
In one of these imagined futures, the modellers speculated that by the end of the century the average consumption of electricity per head for the whole world could grow to over four times that of the rich countries at present, and that fossil fuels would remain the main source of energy. They emphasised that the outputs of such ‘what if?’ exercises were in no sense predictions or forecasts.
Your report also says that ‘scientists’ believe that the number of starving people could increase between 5 and 10 per cent as a result of the impact of climate change on cereal crops. In fact, the study upon which Professor McMichael and colleagues relied found that under most scenario storylines the projected number of people at risk of hunger, after allowing for the growth in incomes and the positive as well as the negative effects of climate change, would decline from 800 million in 2000 to between 100 and 250 million in 2080.
Ian Castles
Narrabundah
[Letter ends]
Procedurally, I don’t think that it would be competent for a legislative chamber of one member country of the UN to take up an issue with the Secretary-General. There are 200 government that would object and I accept that they would have a right to do so.