

The Black Swan and the Bell Curve - pauldelany
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/the-black-swan-and-the-bell-curve?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29

======
glenra
Wow, that author is a truly committed doom-and-gloomer. If I were one too, I'm
sure I'd find his argument persuasive. But apparently I'm wearing the wrong
colored glasses to perceive his alleged "plague of violent and weird weather
in the last few years" as evidence of more than selective attention and status
quo bias.

~~~
leot
He's not perceiving any particular weird weather events as evidence for
climate change -- we won't know for some time whether the freaky weather is or
isn't evidence climate change related because the data are so noisy. That
said, in general, extreme weather _has been_ predicted by climate change
models[1].

If your neighbor said to you "looks like it's going to rain tomorrow night --
I saw a storm system coming in while I was out of town", and then tomorrow
night it rains, you don't say "well, Fred, you predicted it, but we don't know
for _sure_ that the rain was caused by the storm you saw, so we're going to be
sure we take everything we hear from you with a grain of salt."

The author wasn't saying "the rain was caused by the storm Fred saw". Rather,
he's saying that no one is listening to Fred even though the freaky weather
suggests that he's been right so far.

[1] [http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/news/increasingly-variable-
summ...](http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/news/increasingly-variable-summer-
rainfall-in-southeast-linked-to-climate-change)

~~~
glenra
The weather so far _isn't freaky_. One can say the weather thus far "is
consistent with" predictions mostly because the uncertainty bands are wide
enough that _any_ weather would be "consistent with" predictions. This author
_is_ claiming weather is somehow, shall we say, unusually unusual (and also
unusually bad); but it just isn't so.

Take flooding, for example. Yes, there have been some bad floods recently but
no, flooding isn't unusually bad. Quote:

 _"Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more
negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly,
Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find
systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor
change in flood magnitudes in their analysis."_

[http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/04/decrease-in-
floods...](http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/04/decrease-in-floods-
around-world.html)

The weather so far suggests the people claiming doom and gloom _is already
happening_ have been wrong so far. Certainly one can find what looks like
evidence to the contrary by cherry-picking - just find specific places where
specific types of weather extremes happened to get "more extreme" over the
period for which you've got good data, then write an article like the one you
link to. Ask yourself this: If they had looked at some different region and
found it to have a trend towards _less_ extreme weather or to have no trend at
all, would this finding have been publishable? Could they have gotten press
for saying "we looked at all the natural causes we could think of, ruled them
out, and are forced to conclude that AGW made for _less_ extreme weather in
(area X)"? If not, there's a publication bias such that we'd see regular "it's
getting worse" articles even if it were not, in fact, getting worse.

------
jannes
As a German reader I think I can say that the part about Germany is wrong.

In Germany the whole deal is about renewable energy. Even though nuclear
energy does not produce greenhouse gasses and _seems_ to be clean, it is by no
means a renewable energy source. For most Germans, clean energy is certainly
not the goal, but sustainable and renewable energy is. The article totally
confuses these two things.

Also, a majority of Germans believes that nuclear energy is just too dangerous
to be handled by humans. (Yes, we are pussies in this regard.)

The commitment to phase out nuclear energy does not mean to be less commited
to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact it only means that you
have to be more focussed on your goals than before.

Personally, I heavily doubt that the cut of 40% in greenhouse gas emissions
until 2020 (compared to the level of 1990) will work out. But it is
nevertheless good to have these ambitious goals. They have probably led to
better legislation to encourage the use of renewable energy than in other
countries. On some level these goals put pressure on politicians to do
something. If they lead to only 5% reduction, I would already consider it a
success.

If that scale for success seems stupid to you, you are right. But this is the
measurement of success I put on politicians. I don't expect much from them.
That's what I learned from the past. Most of them can only think until the
next election. 2020 is just too distant to be important for most politicians.

------
Yhippa
I think the author might be misinterpreting The Black Swan Theory when he says
this: " . . . Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit Mandelbrot postulate that
seemingly very improbable events take place because the probability
distribution turns out (mainly in hindsight!) to have "fat tails"--that is,
instead of conforming to the "normal" Bell Shape form, the distribution has a
shape in which the probability of extreme events is greater than normal."

I think what NNT is trying to say is not that the probability of the tails
extreme events is greater than normal but rather that these Black Swan events
are rare and we tend not to predict them due to our bell curve obsession. When
they do happen however they're game-changers.

~~~
leot
No. The consequence of fat tails is that the risk-reward relationship becomes
extremely wonky.

Assuming that the actors involved were rational, both the BP disaster and the
housing market crashes could be characterized as the result of a mis-
application of the normal distribution to distributions that actually had fat
tails. BP management _way_ underestimated the risk of an extremely costly
crisis, as did housing speculators.

------
jswinghammer
A Black Swan in this context would be a shock to the system that no one saw
coming nor could see coming. For instance a change in the sun which would
drastically warm or cool the earth far beyond the effects of CO2. Maybe a
natural disaster or an industrial accident that had a cascade effect that
would reach beyond what anyone could have seen coming. You can't do anything
about either of these things but that won't stop people from suggesting it
could have been avoided with the right (or more of): "fill in the blank with
your favorite solution to all problems in life."

~~~
leot
Not entirely -- it's better to think of "unknown unknowns" that current
circumstances might well contribute to the probability of occurring. We might
know of 10 events that all "only" have a 1% chance of occurring, causing us to
estimate risk of any one occurring at 10%. But because of how much everything
is getting mucked with, there might not be 10 events that have a 1% chance,
but instead 50, or 100.

------
NY_USA_Hacker
Yes, during the campaign, Chosen of Oprah, Blessed Be He, promised to ratchet
up regulations to shut down the coal fired electric power plants. But that's
now too little, too late because as we know:

(1) Humans are evil. They are sinful, greedy, duplicitous, violent,
irrational, and destructive.

The claims that the concerns about human caused significant global warming are
just a flim flam fraud are just deceptions of the Devil.

(2) Evil humans are destroying the planet, the 100% all-natural, delicate,
sensitive, pure, pristine, precious environment.

The weather was never like this before evil humans started working with the
bow and arrow.

(3) For this evil transgression, humans will be made to suffer terrible
retribution of extreme weather, failed crops, farms and forests turned into
deserts, lowlands flooded, cute, cuddly, sweet, pure white baby polar bears
drowning in the ice-free Arctic, penguins starving, and worse. The whales will
die, and when the whales die, the oceans will die and then we will die, and
the whales are starting to die.

(4) For this retribution, humans need redemption or death from their sin,
evil, and transgressions. The only possible redemption is sacrifice. We have
to start by giving up computers, telephones, airplanes, plastics, TV, yes,
even including the soaps, electric power, cars, frozen foods, and McDonald's
French fries. Then we must give up synthetic fabrics, permanent press, washing
machines, paper plates, deodorant, and women's bras and panties.

Humans must abstain from sex.

But this will not be enough, not nearly enough: The sun is about to stop
moving across the sky, and the only solution is to have a holy Mayan priest
hold ceremonies pouring the blood of evil humans on a sacred rock. The only
qualified priest is Saint Laureate Al Guru aided by the dedicated, devoted
Guru Acolytes lead by Sister Laurie.

The blood will come from sacrificing virgins (when they first arrived at the
ceremony with Saint Guru).

Only in this way, along with Cap and Trade and the EPA, can the planet be
saved.

~~~
leot
Are you saying that global warming isn't real? Are you suggesting that humans
aren't responsible? Because if so, you're Just Plain Wrong
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming>

For some reason, millions of people believe that scientists, who spend all day
trying to prove each other wrong, have been conspiring to lie about global
warming. At the same time, those millions ignore the actual organized
disinformation campaign perpetrated by those whose businesses get hurt
whenever people start conserving fuel.

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
Yes, it looks like the election season is 'warming' and someone turned on the
propaganda machine again with Goebel's old rule: Just repeat it often enough
and people will come to believe it.

Global warming is real to the present depending on when one starts to count
from. In the past the earth has been at times warmer than now and cooler than
now.

Humans responsible? Human are clearly responsible for some global warming:
E.g., light a match and warm the earth. But humans clearly are not responsible
for all the quite wild changes in climate in the geological record before
humans even existed. And it is tough to say that humans had much to do with
the earth falling into the Little Ice Age or starting to come out of it.

Is current human activity significantly warming the earth? I have looked hard
yet seen no credible reports that it is. No, I do not count Guru Ramaswami's
'radiative forcing' crapola at the center of the IPCC documents. For 'climate
science', that is nearly all just a flim flam fraud scam by a closed group of
people pushing their orthodoxy to push their own careers.

I know; I know: One of Al Guru's Yale profs liked to take vacations in Hawaii
so put a CO2 sampling station there and has CO2 concentration data for some
decades. Then the screaming started: "CO2 is a greenhouse gas, will 'trap'
heat and warm the planet, and we will DESTROY THE EARTH." BS. CO2 only absorbs
in three narrow bands, one for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of
the molecule, and all three bands are out in the infrared. Net, CO2 doesn't
absorb much energy and is trivial, a nit, compared with water vapor, methane,
clouds, etc. The CO2 is just something to scream about.

My understanding is that the predictions of rapid warming by the 'climate
scientists' over the past few decades never happened thus seriously hurting
their credibility. Heck, the 'leading climate scientist' back in 1970 or so
(I'll save the time to look up his name, claims, and date -- but you remember,
it was a 'Newsweek' or 'Time' cover story) about 'global cooling'.

For the article, it seems to have gotten the memo: Don't talk about 'global
warming' and, instead, talk about 'climate change'. So, jumping in with the
media, the article seems to go along with the suggestion that human activity
has caused climate change has caused extreme climate this spring caused many
more than the usual spring tornadoes in the US and, in particular, ones aimed
at population centers, all without any serious, numerical, historical data on
tornadoes in the US. Sure: ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and PBS can get people
up on their hind legs this way, but not me. So, the screaming is just flim
flam to stir up hysteria.

I have seen no "organized disinformation campaign", and you provided no
evidence of one.

It's not about a "campaign". Instead it's about the climate and solid evidence
and science about the climate. So far, net, 'no worries, mate'. For the flim
flam fraudsters, ROFL.

I used to debate all this nonsense on Reddit but gave up on Reddit and saw
that mostly everyone saw that the global warming crowd was just pushing a
fraud and quit listening. So, I quit arguing. So, I'm not going to dig out all
my details on the 'radiative forcing' crapola at the center of the IPCC
garbage, the NASA guy who makes so much noise, the good work done by the guy
at MIT, the Hadley e-mail data, the 50 cent per KWH solar power in Germany,
the wacko Al Guru graph that failed to notice that in the geological record
from the Vostok ice core data the CO2 increased hundreds of years AFTER the
temperature increased, etc. The whole thing is dishonest science and a flim
flam fraud scam.

I've got good news for you: Relax. F'get about Al Guru, Cap and Trade,
shutting down coal plants and, thus, wrecking the US economy, the polar bears,
the whales, the rising sea levels, etc. Let the EPA enviro-wackos get real
jobs and save the tax money. Let Icemelt Immelt find something useful to do.
Let Al Guru find some more acolyte chicks to bed. Tell the UN IPCC to go back
to railroad engineering. F'get about the fraud.

Give up on the morality play of human sin and evil and the classic dramatic
trilogy of transgression, retribution, and redemption. If you like that
trilogy, then listen to Wagner's 'Ring' or 'Parsifal' or Tolkien's 'Ring' or
'Star Wars'. Relax. After all, it's just a movie.

~~~
leot
Oh for heaven's sake: <http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php>

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
I have no connection with Exxon or anything in climate studies. Instead, my
interests are well represented here on HN. I have never gotten even one penny
in research grants from anything having to do with climate in any sense. So,
the claim of the Web site at your URL that Exxon is funding 'skeptics' is
irrelevant to me.

There's nothing significant against Exxon at that Web site, certainly nothing
like your "organized disinformation campaign".

Maybe Exxon funded some 'climate science', although the Web site gave no
evidence.

Well, how'd the whole 'global warming' thing get started anyway? Sure: VP Al
Guru told the NSF, etc. to fund his buddies for 'climate alarmism'. That's how
the 'closed community' of 'climate science' alarmists got started: They all
reviewed each other's research papers and grant proposals, and they all knew
that there was only one source of money, Al Guru, and that that source wanted
only one answer -- human CO2 raising temperatures. Now that they are on the
back of that tiger, and could not have a career in science anywhere else, they
have to just keep riding that tiger.

But your URL has alarmist nonsense about extreme weather -- droughts heat
waves, etc. There's essentially no connection between such things and the
arguments about global warming, at least not for decades or centuries.

So, the increases in temperature over the past few decades are so small that
they are tough to measure or to show an increase, but even without showing an
increase in temperature we are supposed to believe that the increase, too
small to measure, is causing massive climate 'change' now, as with the
tornadoes this spring? Total reeking BS.

But when the predictions for global warming clearly didn't happen, there was a
memo to talk about climate 'change'. While global 'warming' can be
characterized by just average temperature, say, over the planet, over a year,
measured by, say, satellite, and while some temperature records go back
hundreds of years and some temperature evidence, say, ice core data, goes back
hundreds of thousands of years, climate 'change' is MUCH more difficult to
evaluate, e.g., compare with the past. While the past temperature record is
nothing like what we can measure today, the climate 'change' record is much
worse. So, the climate change screamers can keep screaming, as for the
tornadoes this spring, without much comparison with the past.

For the funding corrupting science, f'get about Exxon and concentrate on Al
Guru.

That is, the LESS data they have, the MORE screaming they are free to do. We
just should refuse to listen.

Besides, the usual media, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, just LOVE the
morality play of evil humans doing transgressions and causing retribution and
the drama of tornadoes. Grab'm by the gut, and their eyeballs will be sure to
follow, and then get the ad revenue. Those media outlets are in the ad
business and will push anything at all, any sewage -- crime, scandal, blood,
danger -- that can be turned into drama to grab people by the heart, the gut,
and below the belt.

E.g., what was the frequency of tornadoes in the area of the present state of
Kansas each year over the past 400 years? Not a chance of getting good data.
And, heck, the media won't even report such frequency data over the past, say,
decade. Why not? The data would show no significant change, have no drama, and
would kill the made up story with drama.

So, the tornadoes this spring can be screamed to be from 'climate change' from
evil humans, as we have heard.

You are spouting just alarmist nonsense.

The data for human caused significant global warming is BS; for climate
change, much worse. You have no serious evidence.

You didn't take my advice just to relax and f'get about Al Guru.

How much are YOU getting paid?

~~~
leot
I never implied you had anything to do with Exxon. I'm not getting paid
anything, by anybody, to talk about global warming. I have no conflicts of
interest w.r.t. climate science.

Are you suggesting that climate science is more remunerative than the fossil
fuel industry? I'd wager that the top two or three oil execs make more than
every climate scientist in the whole world, combined.

> There's nothing significant against Exxon at that Web site, certainly
> nothing like your "organized disinformation campaign".

Huh? So, what _does_ qualify as an organized disinformation campaign? I mean,
did you actually look at the website?
<http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php>

We know:

a) Exxon, and many other companies besides, makes less money if cap-and-trade
is instituted or a carbon tax levied. These are multi-billion dollar
industries that can afford to throw employees and tons of money at their
problems.

b) Exxon _has_ given lots of money to think-tanks that spread Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt about climate science. See the URL above.

c) FUD works. It's cheap and doesn't need to be true. Witness how effective
creationists have been in getting the media and schools to present "both
sides". It has delayed action on things like tobacco use, acid rain, and ozone
depletion. e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt>

Scientists don't want catastrophic climate change -- lots study it because
they're genuinely worried about the planet and their kids' future. Many feel
that, if climate change is real, it's their ethical duty to make sure that
people in power know this. And media organizations would rather cover
celebrities and sex scandals. The fact that there _is_ a media narrative about
some story doesn't imply that the narrative is the cause of the story's
coverage in the first place.

If you're so sure of yourself, though, perhaps you should engage people that
know far more than me? Go propose edits to the Global warming article on
Wikipedia -- they have _extensive_ archives of debate that form the basis for
the article's content. I would be surprised if much of what you have said
hasn't already been directly and more thoroughly addressed.

All this said, though, perhaps the bigger question is: what _would_ convince
you that global warming is a big problem and that it's being caused by people?

~~~
glenra
Let's pick just one of those links from your ExxonSecrets page - Cato
Institute. Here's the page:
<http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=21>

It lists a "key quote" and a "quote". Do you disagree with either? Here they
are:

 _"No known mechanism can stop global warming in the near term. International
agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, would have no detectable effect on average
temperature within any reasonable policy time frame of 50 years or so, even
with full compliance." Source: Chapter 47 of the Cato Handbook for Congress,
107 Congress_

-and-

 _In response to the World Watch Report in May 2003 that linked climate change
and severe weather events: "It's false. There is absolutely no evidence that
extreme weather events are on the increase. None. The argument that more and
more dollar damages accrue is a reflection of the greater amount of wealth
we've created." - Jerry Taylor Source: "Enviro Trends: Poor to Bear Brunt of
Climate Change"_

If you think those quotes are FUD or "disinformation", please make your case.
They seem pretty sensible to me. The first quote is inarguably true - people
who favored Kyoto seemed not to care that it would make no difference in the
warming trend, it had _symbolic_ value. It was regarded even by its advocates
as "a first step" that might possibly at some point in the future lead to
further changes that _did_ help.

The second quote is roughly true as well though it would be easier to find
people who disagree. If you cherry pick you can of course find _specific
areas_ where some variety of weather seems to be getting "more extreme" over
various timeframes, but more inclusive studies don't find much of a trend. And
in particular, the study he claims is bogus because it's based on _dollar
value_ of damage probably is indeed bogus for that reason.

~~~
leot
For me, at least, it's a matter of volume-within-the-public-sphere. Oil and
business lobby groups are undoubtedly better organized and better funded than
most everyone else.

I think the purpose of the quotes is not to demonstrate that the organizations
are FUD-dispersers, but that they're all pushing the same message: be
skeptical about what you hear about global warming. I'm sure PR people have
tons of nice ways of framing what it is that Exxon is doing (I mean, why
shouldn't ExxonMobil have the right to advocate for its own interests, right?)
FUD is less effective if it's obvious, and it's in every anti-CO2-regulation
think-tank's interest to appear as objective as possible, and make it look
they're reasonable people who just might have come down on the other side,
but, goshdarnit, they just came to a different conclusion because that was the
best one any objective rational observer could come to. Also, the Cato
institute seems to have more integrity among the libertarian-leaning groups,
at least in my eyes, so it's not surprising that at least they would be more
measured.

But while were here, let's look at some other recipients, though: "Cooler
heads coalition" deeds: Held a congressional and media briefing entitled
"Impacts of Global Warming: Why the Alarmist View is Wrong". Speakers
presented arguments against claims that global warming will cause increases in
extreme weather events, sea level rise, vector-borne diseases, and species
extinction. Source: Cooler Heads Coalition website 5/04

CEI: 'Published article named "Liberal 'Scientists' Lead Jihad Against Global-
Warming Skeptics" No mention of 'jihad' anywhere within the article itself,
and no explanation for the reference to a connection between the scientists
and jihad in the title of the article. It seems to be a cheap attempt at
sensationalism and hate mongering by trying to connect global warming
scientists to terrorism.' Source: CEI website, 5/07" ... and 'Warning that the
$125 million film fails to employ sound science to back up its depictions, the
conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute has sent reporters a listing of
global-warming skeptics who can be counted on to dispute the film's premise.
Source: "Disaster Flick Unleashes a Blizzard of Spin," Scripps Howard News,
May 14 2004'

Heritage Foundation: "[C]alls to drastically reduce emissions in sulfur
dioxide (SOx), nitrogen oxide (NOx), mercury, and carbon dioxide would
jeopardize U.S. energy and national security. ...The Bush administration and
Congress need to steadfastly resist alarmist calls to drastically reduce
carbon dioxide, a clear, odorless gas and a fundamental nutrient of the
planetary food chain. Curbing carbon dioxide would cause a major change in the
electricity-generation fuel mix and would adversely affect the nation's energy
supply and economic strength."

... I'd say much of this counts as FUD, wouldn't you? And there looks to be
about 150 of such organizations, with employees working all day, every day, to
make sure that their organization continues to receive funding from businesses
to whom a carbon tax is a major threat.

~~~
glenra
I'm sure you believe what you're saying, but no, I don't think any of that
counts as FUD. When people say stuff you disagree with that is _true_ you
can't call it FUD. Your claim "Oil and business lobby groups are undoubtedly
better organized and better funded than most everyone else" is pretty clearly
false if the amounts featured at exxonsecrets are any indication; they're a
pittance compared to the funding the alarmist groups get. Like, that Cato page
(again) says Cato got $125k _since 1998_ , which averages out to roughly
$10k/year. There are only a couple groups on the list getting the kind of
funding that could even _plausibly_ affect their agenda; all the others are
just on the list for rhetorical value. Like, Group X said something we don't
like once or hosted a lecture by somebody we don't like and Exxon gave them a
$5k grant once, so we're going to connect the dots and claim nefarious
motives.

Again, rather than do a point-by-point, I'm just going to pick one. You hilite
that CEI wrote an article titled "Liberal 'Scientists' Lead Jihad Against
Global-Warming Skeptics". Yeah, the title sounds sensationalist - titles often
do that, but get over the title and actually read the damn article. It turns
out to mostly be a debunking of...the effort that produced the exxonsecrets
site! Here's the article:

<http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20573>

Quote:

====

 _In 2006, UCS decided to attack ExxonMobil, the world’s largest private
energy company, over the issue of global warming. It also decided on its
tactics: It would demonize the oil company by comparing it to cigarette
companies. ExxonMobil, said UCS, was “adopt[ing] the tobacco industry’s
disinformation tactics ... to cloud the scientific understanding of climate
change and delay action on the issue.”

In a paper issued Jan. 3, 2007, UCS accuses ExxonMobil of funding “front
groups” opposed to the climate-alarmist agenda of groups such as UCS and of
former Vice President Al Gore. The company, said the UCS report, had
distributed $16 million to 43 advocacy groups from 1998 to 2005 “to confuse
the public on global-warming science.” Let’s leave aside the fact that $16
million over eight years can’t match the $2 billion that the federally funded
Climate Change Science Program spends each year on global warming, or even the
$4 million annual budget of just one of the many well-funded global-warming
advocacy groups, Strategies for the Global Environment (the umbrella
organization for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change).[...]_

 _UCS doesn’t focus its attacks on the actual work produced by the
organizations it targets. Instead, it tries to discredit its opponents by
using ad hominem innuendo. And that’s what gets the attention of the media.
For instance, when astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas determined that the Earth’s
temperature had actually been warmer at earlier times in history -- a premise
endorsed by a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel -- UCS ignored the
research but attacked the researcher personally, noting that Baliunas was
affiliated with the George C. Marshall Institute, which UCS said had received
$630,000 in ExxonMobil grants for its climate-science program._

=====

>And there looks to be about 150 of such organizations, with employees working
all day, every day, to make sure that their organization continues to receive
funding from businesses to whom a carbon tax is a major threat.

Ahem. One of those organization is a _university_ that gets occasional $5k
grants. $5k probably gets a nice thank you letter but does not get you
employees "working all day, every day" to make your interest theirs. Another
dozen random links I clicked were to organizations for whom the documented
contribution of Exxon is $0. If you think there are 150 organizations on that
list that are _heavily influenced by_ Exxon, you've been snookered by a PR
effort.

~~~
leot
I didn't say that every employee at all 150 organizations was working all day,
every day to disprove claims of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It is,
however, the case that many of these organizations are in the business of
getting grants from the likes of the Chamber of Commerce and other such
organizations that have a vested interest in preventing cap-and-trade or a
carbon tax. And the idea that scientific funding of climate change research is
somehow equivalent to the funding of AGW denial advocacy groups is absurd.

Here's why AGW-denial often counts as FUD: it occurs within the public sphere,
rather that the scientific (or even legal) one, and is thus not subject to (1)
actor accountability, (2) the same standards of evidence, or (3)
cogency/coherence of argument.

Science FUD goes like this:

a) careful, cautious scientists whose jobs depend on being "right" about
nearly everything spend months researching, writing, and editing a careful,
cautious paper making conservative claims supportive of AGW. Doing so, it is
rather difficult to act in "bad faith".

b) In response, rather than produce a similarly careful cautious reply (in a
scientific venue), the anti-AGW organization produces a "white paper", or
press release, or op-ed, in which they "debunk" the scientific paper by making
superficially appealing arguments, attractive to the 99% of people who are
non-scientists. Such a reply is easy to produce by acting in "bad faith"
(although, to a lawyer type, as lobbyists frequently are, this is simply
advocacy).

Looking at 1-3, then: (1) Note the gross asymmetry between (a) and (b). If the
actors in (a) are wrong, they lose standing in the scientific community, and
in the case of scientific misconduct could very well lose their jobs. This is
very hard to imagine happening in the case of a think-tank pundit, who
operates in the institutional-memory-free public sphere, because (b)'s actors
are not interacting with a community of experts but rather simply engaging in
advocacy. Indeed, assuming that they are receiving funding from those with an
anti-AGW agenda, they could even lose their jobs for telling the truth (c.f.
David Frum at the AEI <http://wonkette.com/404420/david-frum-leaves-national-
review>). See also
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagen...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange)

(2) Anti-AGW organization "scholars" often trade in citation-free commentary
(e.g. <http://www.aei.org/article/103523>). Because it's not their job to
convince a group of scientific peers, they can get paid to do research _sans_
scientific evidence.

(3) When anti-science advocacy groups have to present a cogent or coherent
argument they tend to fall apart. E.g., the FUD against gay marriage (Perry v.
Schwarzenegger) and FUD against evolution (Kitzmiller v. Dover School
District). I've not yet found any such trial that pits anti- against pro-AGW
people. But if this were to occur, I expect we would find a similar outcome.

~~~
glenra
> _I've not yet found any such trial that pits anti- against pro-AGW people.
> But if this were to occur, I expect we would find a similar outcome._

One reason you have trouble finding such trials is that the pro-AGW people are
afraid to debate anti-AGW people in public. When such debates happen, the
skeptics tend to win. Here's one example of that happening:

<http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070316_notcrisis.pdf>

> _Anti-AGW organization "scholars" often trade in citation-free commentary
> (e.g.<http://www.aei.org/article/103523>)._

Yes, articles in the Los Angeles Times tend not to have citations. So what?
It's not like the author is just making stuff up. The fact that _you_ don't
know offhand where some fact comes from mostly means you weren't paying
attention to the underlying debate. (AEI, Cato, and Heritage studies do
generally have citations, whether or not the resulting newspaper op-eds
include them.)

Besides, pro-AGW folks also "often trade in citation-free commentary". The
worst examples being when they discuss a specific skeptic's work but
mischaracterize, paraphrase, and refuse to link to the original so their
claims can be checked. (RealClimate did that repeatedly with respect to Steve
McIntyre, leading to his amusing nickname: "he-who-must-not-be-named")

Oh, and you left off a step for the pro-AGW process: "Issue a dire press
release that exaggerates your findings." :-)

> _careful, cautious scientists whose jobs depend on being "right" about
> nearly everything_

In what sense does an academic scientists' job depend on being "right" about
anything? It does depend on publishing lots of articles, but most published
articles are false. (<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/>)
What matters for publication is that the thesis is interesting and somewhat
defensible at the time based on prior research, not that it's "right". They
don't take your phd away when it turns out your thesis was wrong; wrong
articles still count towards your publication record.

> _"I didn't say that every employee at all 150 organization..."_

True, but you did seem to imply that _all 150 organizations_ had at least one
employee trying to disprove AGW at least some of the time. But a university
that gets a $5k grant every other year from Exxon - sufficient to make the
list - is making less off that grant than it does from the average _student_ ,
so your claim was trivially false. The claim of "150 organizations" is
hyperbole. If you claimed that, say, "a dozen" organizations were doing that
it would at least be plausible, but then you'd have to do the work to identify
_which_ ones you're making the claim about; the list you point to is itself
FUD and essentially useless in that regard.

> _"If the actors in (a) are wrong, they lose standing in the scientific
> community, and in the case of scientific misconduct could very well lose
> their jobs"_

Being wrong does not constitute scientific misconduct; it is very hard to
imagine an academic losing their job for that. Scientists are wrong all the
time; it means nothing. It's a chance to write _another_ paper correcting the
error, further padding the CV. (Again, see the link I gave for "most published
research findings are false")

~~~
leot
Come on, a public debate (lost by a pretty slim margin!) does not a trial make
(especially not one that asks if global warming is a "crisis", rather than
whether there is GW, whether humans are responsible, and what could happen if
nothing is done, which is what's being dealt with here).

Even if you can find a few AEI, Cato, or Heritage foundation "studies" that
genuinely try to participate in scientific debate on AGW (and I would be
surprised if you could find more than one or two) I think you'll agree that
the vast majority of the work of these organizations does no such thing. For
some reason, AEI + co. seem more interested in convincing lay people that AGW
doesn't exist than actually trying to figure out whether or not it does.

Scientists who are pro-AGW (the people I'm advocating we listen to) do _not_
trade in citation-free commentary, even if they produce it for P.R. reasons.
Their trade takes place subject to anonymous peer review and strict standards
of evidence. A problem with AEI and friends is in part that they blur the line
between scholarly and not scholarly work, putting out publications that have a
few citations, but not engaged in a good faith attempt to figure out what's
actually going on.

It looks like this debate is no longer about AGW _per se_ , but instead on the
reliability of the scientific process _as a whole_ : It's not entirely clear
what you mean by "most published articles are false". First, you're using a
single article to back up a claim that the article itself undercuts to an
extent. In fact, that article is making a very particular claim about the
existence of alleged relationships. Genuinely good results are obviously good
and aren't at all likely to be "false", and there are plenty of these, even if
they're a minority. This is what is meant by working with the "best science".
Like in everything else, most science is only of marginal use, but the subset
that is useful is extremely useful and people can fairly easily recognize
which is which.

I was very careful to separate misconduct from being wrong. Misconduct gets
you fired. When you're stupendously and regularly _right_ people want
collaborate with you and fly you to their conferences. Less so with the anti-
AGW crowd, in which I would guess good and prolific writing (irrespective of
overall correctness or fairness) makes one popular.

> Scientists are wrong all the time; it means nothing.

This is so obviously ridiculous it hardly bears a response. If being wrong
means nothing, then being right means nothing, and this can't be true. It's
the job of an academic to be right about "new" out-on-a-limb things -- it's
what they do. You could similarly conclude that because concert pianists play
more wrong notes than the average person they must be bad at piano.

For some reason, anti-AGW people seem to believe that pro-AGW people either
(1) _want_ AGW to be taking place, or (2) want everyone to start living in
communes ASAP. Neither of these is true. First, unlike the "disappointment"
[[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/apr/6/20060406-1121...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/apr/6/20060406-112119-5897r/)]
expressed over not finding WMD in Iraq, I don't know any pro-AGW person who
will be similarly disappointed if the mean planet temperature stays roughly
the same. Second, climate change scientists are normal people leading normal
lives, if perhaps bicycling a little more frequently -- they don't in the
aggregate want everyone to become hippies.

With respect to the 150 orgs -- I said what I said: they work (or did work) to
make sure they continue(d) to be funded by corporations that stand(/stood) to
lose if there is a carbon tax or somesuch. This doesn't mean they're spending
all their time writing papers denying AGW -- at the very least they are
engaged in fundraising, too. Regardless, how many well-funded organizations,
acting in bad faith, would it take to produce enough FUD to change US public
policy?

~~~
glenra
The _only thing that matters_ is whether AGW is a crisis. If it's not, we
don't especially need to _do_ anything about it. The idea that any group is
still claiming there's been no warming at all is essentially an urban legend.
The debate has "moved on" from there. That public debate I referenced
addressed to the heart of the question and the AGW side lost it; the skeptics
(in my view, quite justifiably) won.

> _It's not entirely clear what you mean by "most published articles are
> false"_

I mean that most published research findings are false, for exactly the
reasons detailed here: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/>

You don't seem to have read the article, or you're missing the context it
addresses. Of particular relevance to climate studies is that they tend to be
looking for (a) a small effect size (b) in a popular field (c) with lots of
money at stake and (d) a great deal of flexibility in experiment design and
analysis methods - these are all aspects that suggest a higher-than average
probability of false conclusions being reached.

> _Genuinely good results are obviously good and aren't at all likely to be
> "false", and there are plenty of these, even if they're a minority._

I don't know how you are defining some results as "genuinely good" or
"obviously good" - how would one test that? I question the assertion that
these are useful categories. All scientific results are tentative and can be
overturned by later results. "Obviousness" isn't something one can judge other
than much much later in retrospect.

Regarding being wrong, the most damning aspect of the Hockey Team has been
their inability to admit error. If you can't admit ever having made a mistake,
you can't learn from your errors and make the study better next time. Of the
two sides, my impression is that the skeptics have been more willing to admit
and evaluate the possibility of error and more willing to explore other
hypotheses. And also willing to say "we don't know" when that's the best
answer. True, part of that comes from being outside the mainstream so there's
less at stake. But another part is that CAGW isn't really a scientific
position - it more closely resembles a religion. (Infallibility is a more
popular attribute among the faithful than it is among the scientifically
minded.) Again and again we see data sets used inappropriately on the grounds
that doing so _produces the right answer_ \- that's just not science. You
can't arbitrarily flip and crop Mia Tiljander's sediment series or search
through Graybill bristlecones until you find some that have the right shape,
and then use the shape they produce as evidence for your theory.

You're right, I'm pretty sure pro-AGW people do at some level _want_ it to be
taking place. They do so because threats to humanity are _exciting_. Humans
have a need to be involved and worried about threats and there just aren't
enough real threats to worry about in modern life. Centuries ago, people were
too busy scrabbling for food or fighting in wars or fighting diseases to be
worried about anything so obscure and distant. Worrying that things might get
_ever-so-slightly warmer_ a century from now, that water levels might be
_ever-so-slightly higher_ then than now, that we might need to plant different
crops or observe a different mix of wildlife ...is a huge luxury.

