

The Unbearable Complexity of Climate - azgolfer
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/27/the-unbearable-complexity-of-climate-2/

======
rbranson
Um, is this the same guy? CFO of South Pacific Oil?

<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/willis-eschenbach/14/a54/935>

~~~
viggity
If it was, does that make his points any less valid?

~~~
joe_the_user
IF this person is pushing one side of an argument without revealing the large
stake he has in that side winning, then he loses credibility. He wasn't honest
about something one would expect him to be honest about and so one needs to
look more closely at other things he says.

Journalist disclose their interests and their companies interests to avoid
losing credibility this way.

~~~
anamax
> IF this person is pushing one side of an argument without revealing the
> large stake he has in that side winning, then he loses credibility.

You mean like researchers who get money to "confirm" AGW?

> Journalist disclose their interests

Oh really? Do you know how many NYT reporters are married to or involved with
folks they cover? (Hint - the answer is not 0. The NYT's response when asked
is that they've cleared things with their editor....)

~~~
gjm11
Do you have any actual evidence that climate researchers are paid "to confirm
AGW"? (I take it that by that you mean that if they published work, of equal
quality to what they actually publish, that cast doubt on AGW then they would
get paid less or fired.)

Note 1: saying "climategate" doesn't constitute presenting evidence; pointing
to something in the pilfered emails that says (e.g.) "Of course I have to
fudge this because otherwise I'll lose my job" and that isn't clearly a joke
would constitute presenting evidence.

Note 2: observing that very few people who get paid to do climate science are
denying AGW doesn't constitute presenting evidence either. Very few people who
get paid to do biology are denying evolution, but that isn't because they're
paid to confirm evolution; it's because evolution is, in fact, correct, and
studying enough biology to get paid for doing it usually leads people to
realise this. So you'd need to rule out that sort of explanation in the case
of climate science.

~~~
anamax
> Do you have any actual evidence that climate researchers are paid "to
> confirm AGW"? (I take it that by that you mean that if they published work,
> of equal quality to what they actually publish, that cast doubt on AGW then
> they would get paid less or fired.)

What do you think that rigging the peer-review process accomplished?

> it's because evolution is, in fact, correct, and studying enough biology to
> get paid for doing it usually leads people to realise this. So you'd need to
> rule out that sort of explanation in the case of climate science.

Are you asserting that AGW is as "settled" as evolution? If not, the analogy
doesn't hold and neither does the conclusion that you'd like to impose.

Climate researchers outside of CRU are acknowledging that the thumb was on the
scale. Is denying that really the hill that you want to defend?

In science, being a "good person" doesn't count as evidence. Neither does "the
folks who disagree are bad people". AGW may turn out to be real (although
that's looking unlikely), but it will take us much longer to find that out
because "good people" behaved badly and did cargo cult science. Which reminds
me - why do we consider them good people?

In addition to rigging peer review and trying to stack grant committees, it's
pretty much SOP to add some blather about "consistent with AGW" to almost
anything these days, in part because that's how the money flows. Of course,
this isn't new. We saw the same thing with AI and "computers".

~~~
gjm11
I think it's extremely unclear to what extent anyone (1) attempted to rig the
peer review process and (2) succeeded. In any case, even a very badly rigged
peer review process would not make it true that climate researchers are "paid
to confirm AGW" unless everyone knows that the process is rigged. I think
_that_ is clearly not so.

No, I am not asserting that AGW is as settled as evolution. I'm pointing out
that "everyone being paid to work on this agrees with X, which shows that you
can't get on in the field without agreeing with X, which shows that there's a
bias against non-X" is a lousy argument, because in the case X=evolution it
produces a result that is (to reasonable people) not credible. Note for the
avoidance of doubt: I was attempting to pre-empt that argument, not accusing
you of having made it.

(The cases X=evolution and X=AGW are somewhat parallel, though certainly not
identical. In both cases there is a robust scientific consensus challenged by
a minority. In both cases at least some of the challenging minority have an
obvious reason for making the challenge that doesn't have much to do with
truth. In both cases the challenging minority has strong ties to a particular
political group -- the same group in both cases, as it happens. In both cases
the challenging minority accuses the majority of having similarly non-truth-
directed motivations, and in both cases it's not terribly clear what those are
really supposed to be.)

I don't know what non-CRU people you are referring to, nor what
acknowledgement they've made that "the thumb was on the scale", so I can't
comment on your statement about that.

The stuff about "good people" and "bad people" is a red herring; neither I nor
anyone upthread made any claim even slightly resembling "these people are Good
and those are Bad, therefore these are Right and those are Wrong". Eschenbach
has a clear incentive to do whatever it takes to make AGW look less likely;
that's true whether he's a good person, a bad person, or (like maybe 99.9% or
so of the human race) a mixture of the two. And, unless he is an incorruptible
saint concerned with nothing but truth, it is rational to apply some discount
to things he says that make AGW look less likely: not because he is a bad
person and bad people never tell the truth, but because he is a (probably
quite rational) person with a strong incentive to say such things even if they
are wrong or misleading.

Similarly, no one (I hope) is saying that mainstream climate scientists must
be right because they are good people and good people never say false things.
But I will happily make the following argument: Imagine someone in the field
of climate science who is inclined to put his or her own interests ahead of
truth, and who doesn't mind doing bad or dishonest science for that purpose.
Do you think that person is more likely to turn to Shell or the AEI or the
Republican party, or to Greenpeace or Al Gore? Where is the readier flow of
money likely to be found?

Is your last paragraph just vague handwaving, or is there an actual argument
there? On the face of it it looks almost like you're suggesting that the
reason why climate scientists almost all defend AGW is that people writing
papers on other subjects tend to say "and by the way this is consistent with
AGW" whether it is or not, but every part of that looks very silly so you
probably have something more sensible in mind.

~~~
anamax
> In any case, even a very badly rigged peer review process would not make it
> true that climate researchers are "paid to confirm AGW" unless everyone
> knows that the process is rigged.

Not at all. Peer-reviewed publications lead to grants. Shut off the former and
you strongly influence the latter.

> No, I am not asserting that AGW is as settled as evolution.

If AGW is not settled, the funding disparity is "interesting". There's clearly
a bias, the only question is its reason. Since it isn't science....

> The stuff about "good people" and "bad people" is a red herring; neither I
> nor anyone upthread made any claim even slightly resembling "these people
> are Good and those are Bad, therefore these are Right and those are Wrong".

Good people vs bad people not a red herring. It's the basis for much of the
climategate defense. "Those good scientists were beset by bad people, so
naturally/it's okay that they did bad things."

> Imagine someone in the field of climate science who is inclined to put his
> or her own interests ahead of truth, and who doesn't mind doing bad or
> dishonest science for that purpose.

You assume that money is the only interesting motivation, and that's simply
not true. It isn't even the dominant motivation among folks doing bad science
- true belief is.

> Do you think that person is more likely to turn to Shell or the AEI or the
> Republican party, or to Greenpeace or Al Gore? Where is the readier flow of
> money likely to be found?

Al Gore and Greenpeace don't fund research and neither does the Republican
Party. However, the folks that do have spent far more funding AGW than
anything else.

So, if you're purely motivated by money, you'd have gone with "AGW is
happening" because that's where the money is, as you agreed upstream. (You
only argued about why that's where the money is.)

> you're suggesting that the reason why climate scientists almost all defend
> AGW

"almost all" turns out to be way too strong. Moreover, the basis for their
support is often data from other fields where many of the folks involved
disagree with that interpretation.

However, my point was that much of of the "AGW is happening" literature
consists of quips in other fields where the connection is tenuous at best.
They're studying something else and threw in an AGW comment because that's an
easy way to get some points. (I'm ignoring the bogus cases like the islands
off India that have been sinking pretty since anyone started paying
attention.)

As I wrote, we see this all the time. When something looks like a winning
story, folks adopt it. Remember "turbo"?

~~~
gjm11
Either you have misunderstood my point about peer review and being-paid-to-
confirm, or I have misunderstood what you mean about being "paid to confirm
AGW". I would only say that someone is paid to do X if they understand that
their job depends on their doing X. A secretly rigged process would not have
that effect.

AGW is not as settled as evolution, but it's still pretty damn settled. I
think that is sufficient to account for the disparity in publications. (As for
disparity in funding: disparity in total funding is a consequence of the fact
that the great majority of climate scientists are AGW believers; if there's a
disparity in funding per person then I haven't heard of it, and I'd rather
suspect it's in the wrong direction for your argument.)

I don't believe I have ever heard anyone defending the CRU people, or the
climate science community in general, or the proposition that the climate is
warning and much of that is the result of human activity, say anything like
"Those good scientists were beset by bad people, so naturally/it's ok that
they did bad things". I have heard "Those scientists were being harassed, so
naturally they did bad things", but that isn't a claim about good people or
bad people. In any case, the discussion here wasn't (last time I looked) about
Things People Have Said About The CRU Emails, but about whether it's correct
to say that climate scientists are "paid to confirm AGW".

I do not assume, or believe, that money is the only interesting motivation.
The question was whether climate scientists are "paid to confirm AGW"; I was
not the person who framed the matter in terms of money. I do think, though,
that money is an extremely common motivator for dishonest work, and that when
people claiming some kind of AGW fraud conspiracy actually deign to suggest
why there would be one it's usually money that they suggest.

The question about funding wasn't "who funds research on this stuff?", but
"who would fund unscrupulous research on this stuff?". If it's easier to get
your dishonest research paid for by one side than the other, then that's the
side that will likely attract a higher proportion of dishonest research.

(So, drawing together two of the above points: what determines which way an
unscrupulous person who cares only about the money will jump is not the total
amount of funding obtained by people on each side, but the amount of funding
per person available to unscrupulous people on each side. I don't see any
reason to think that that disparity works in favour of AGW; I suspect it works
strongly in the other direction, but that's just a guess.)

I dispute your claim that "almost all" is way too strong. See, e.g.,
<http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf> which surveyed a bunch
of earth scientists and found ~90% agreement among the whole population and
~97% agreement among those who (1) list climate science as their area of
specialization and (2) have climate change as the subject of more than half
their recently published papers. (I don't know where those criteria came from,
and therefore can't rule out the possibility that they were dishonestly chosen
to get the result the authors wanted; but I have no reason to think they
were.) Or <http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/Oreskes2007.pdf> which looks
at the abstracts of 928 papers found by searching the literature for "global
climate change".

I'm afraid I still don't really understand your point about "quips in other
fields". Maybe it's because I don't spend much of my time reading scientific
literature from randomly chosen fields (and the fields I'm competent to read
scientific literature in aren't terribly close to climate science) that I
haven't seen this alleged torrent of quips that (it seems like you're saying)
is somehow responsible for climate scientists' belief in AGW. I really don't
see how that could work, but perhaps I'm being dim.

I don't remember anything called "turbo" that illustrates that "when something
looks like a winning story, folks adopt it"; sorry.

~~~
anamax
> Either you have misunderstood my point about peer review

You're "forgetting" that the AGW folks fixed the peer review system. I know
that that's an "inconvient truth", but ....

> AGW is not as settled as evolution, but it's still pretty damn settled.

Then you're not paying attention. The tree data "trick" means that the "before
thermometers" estimates by the AGW folks are wrong, which guts the trend
argument. The "no warming since 2000" means that the models are wrong. The
accounting for how temperature stations were moved is broken. The AGW folks
mis-represented the Russian data. It goes on and on.

> I would only say that someone is paid to do X if they understand that their
> job depends on their doing X.

Since one can get the desired effect without doing that, that's an absurd
standard. You pick people based on whether you think that they've bought in
and are not going to rock the boat. You never have to say anything.

That's part of why I mentioned "true believers".

> I haven't seen this alleged torrent of quips that (it seems like you're
> saying) is somehow responsible for climate scientists' belief in AGW.

I didn't say that it was "responsible", I said that it constituted much of the
supposed consensus. The amount of research that actually concerns AGW is
fairly small. However, there's lots of research where it can seem relevant.
Since AGW is "hot", there's a huge temptation to just throw in a "consistent
with AGW" comment that isn't actually supported by the research being
reported.

This happens all the time in every field. Making a tenuous connection to a hot
topic is a common way to jazz up a paper.

~~~
gjm11
No, I am not '"forgetting" that the AGW folks fixed the peer review system', I
am explaining why _even if that's true_ it doesn't mean that AGW people are
"paid to confirm AGW". Also, so far as I can tell it isn't true for any
sensible meaning of "fixed". But, no doubt, if you repeat the claim often
enough without providing any evidence, it will become true.

The tree data trick does not mean what you say it does; see
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.full.pdf+html)
(key finding from conclusions section: "We find that the hemispheric-scale
warmth of the past decade for the [Northern Hemisphere] is likely anomalous
... This conclusion appears to hold for at least the past 1,300 years ... from
reconstructions that do not use tree-ring proxies, and are therefore not
subject to the associated additional caveats."). Temperatures vary a lot on a
timescale of a few years, so the much-ballyhooed "no warming since 2000"
doesn't in the least mean that the models are wrong; see
[http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warm...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warming-
pause/) and also figure 4 in
[http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2009/20091216_Tempe...](http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2009/20091216_TemperatureOfScience.pdf)
(and the text below that figure). Your claim about "accounting for how
temperature stations were moved" is too vague to respond to. The AGW folks did
not "misrepresent the Russian data" so far as I can tell; see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1000732>.

Do you have any actual evidence that climate scientists "pick people based on
whether [they] think that they've bought in and are not going to rock the
boat"?

I simply do not believe your claim that throwaway "this is consistent with
AGW" remarks in papers on other topics "constitute[s] much of the supposed
consensus". Are you suggesting, e.g., that a large fraction of the papers in
Oreskes's study were really about other topics and had only throwaway
references to AGW (it sure doesn't seem like it from her description), and
that if those papers were excluded then the study would find much less
acceptance of AGW (it sure doesn't seem like it from her description)?

I'd like to point out that you have a nice two-way argument here. If papers by
climate scientists support AGW, that's because climate scientists are all
"true believers" who have been picked based on whether they've bought in and
aren't going to rock the boat. If papers by other people also support AGW,
that's because they've just slapped brief pro-AGW remarks onto papers about
other things. So, I wonder, is there anything the peer-reviewed literature
_could_ contain that you would regard as good evidence that careful scientific
study supports AGW?

~~~
anamax
> I am explaining why even if that's true it doesn't mean that AGW people are
> "paid to confirm AGW".

What part of "you get grants for peer-reviewed publications" don't you
understand?

> Also, so far as I can tell it isn't true for any sensible meaning of
> "fixed".

The folks who wrote the "ClimateGate" e-mails disagree, but then they did the
fixing.

> So, I wonder, is there anything the peer-reviewed literature could contain
> that you would regard as good evidence that careful scientific study
> supports AGW?

This fixation on "peer-review" is interesting. You claim that the "peer"s all
agree, so their review is subject to all that that implies. You might remember
<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/> .

The climate people have threw away raw data, so we can't know whether
"normalization" was actually reasonable. They're still saying "trust us" even
though every time someone finds an error in their work, the error goes the
same direction....

BTW - Scientific truth isn't defined by consensus.

~~~
gjm11
Everything you have said here I think I have already answered earlier, with
the following exceptions.

It was you, not me, who introduced peer review into the discussion; I've no
idea what your basis is for talking about a "fixation".

Most of the raw data that the CRU threw out in the 1980s are, AIUI, still
available elsewhere. CRU's model produces results extremely similar to
everyone else's models.

I don't think it's true that every time an error is found it goes in the same
direction. (Specifically, I think I remember seeing a counterexample. I don't
remember what it was, but then you haven't mentioned any specifics of anything
at any point so I don't feel too bad about that.) It might be true that every
time an error is found and trumpeted about by disbelievers in AGW it's in the
same direction, but there is an obvious explanation for _that_ , no?

Of course scientific truth isn't _defined_ by consensus, and of course I
neither said nor suggested that it is. But for someone who isn't an expert in
any scientific field, the consensus of experts is typically pretty much the
best estimator they have for the truth.

------
Retric
Saying, "I don't understand what's going on" does not mean that nobody
understands what's going on.

PS: If you actually carried out the experiment using the picture as a guide
you would measure a rise in body temperature. The human body trys to maintain
constant temperature, but it can't ignore the laws of physics.

~~~
petewarden
Amen. This is a long opinion piece, with no evidence cited that the
Constructal Law is a better predictor of the climate's response to increased
CO2 than existing techniques. The one relevant paper linked to is an
intriguing but underdeveloped model:

[http://homepage.mac.com/williseschenbach/.Public/Constructal...](http://homepage.mac.com/williseschenbach/.Public/Constructal_Climate.pdf)

The paper _doesn't_ back up the author's claim that "there is no physics-based
reason to assume that increasing CO2 will make any difference to the global
temperature". It includes an assumed factor y=0.4 for the infrared reflectance
'greenhouse factor', and any increase in that value _will_ affect the expected
results.

If anything applying the Constructal Law would be more worrying than current
models, since there's potentially a more chaotic response to increased CO2
levels, increasing the risk of dramatic climate changes.

~~~
azgolfer
From a recent paper by two German Physicists

(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass
houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no
calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the
frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number
calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used
inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f)
thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric
greenhouse conjecture is falsified.

~~~
joe_the_user
I think you got voted down because you don't name the physicists or the
journal they published in.

Also, the phraseology of your points couldn't get into any scientific journal,
so what are you quoting, your summary?

~~~
joe_the_user
Actually,

I think you are talking about

<http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161v4> \- It's referenced by Alexander Cockburn in
his most recent nation article.

It's arxiv with no journal listed as publishing it. You do correctly quote the
abstract but the language of this abstract is pretty overwrought - it doesn't
read like something that would be published in a serious journal whether it's
correct or not. Part of the problem with the language might be a poor
translation.

Climatology is a complex thing and I'm actually sympathetic to exploring
skepticism about global warming. The problem is that the skeptics seem to
often be their own worst enemies.

------
Tichy
"Because climate is a flow system far from equilibrium, it is ruled by the
Constructal Law. As a result, there is no physics-based reason to assume that
increasing CO2 will make any difference to the global temperature, and the
Constructal Law gives us reason to think that it may make no difference at
all."

Sorry, but that is stupid. Just because changing one thing (ie making a short
cut in the river) doesn't change one other thing doesn't imply that no matter
what you change, nothing will change. Also, the author never seems to have
seen a redirected river in a bed of concrete.

It's been nice to have learned about the constructional law, but other than
that, I have to take this article with a grain of salt. It clearly doesn't
seem to be neutral in motivation.

------
andrewcooke
is this kosher?

it starts out fine, explaining how complex systems are, well, complex. but
then it starts to seem a bit odd because it ignores statistical properties
(you can't predict the movement of every gas molecule in a box, but you can
know the average temperature pretty damn accurately). and then suddenly it
jumps to "constructal law":

> The Constructal Law applies to all flow systems which are far from
> equilibrium, like a river or the climate.

wtf? how can something as vague as "the climate" follow a law? and what's the
constructal law? and so you go to wikipedia -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_theory> \- and it all starts to look
a bit flakey...

[edit: less flippant]

~~~
magoghm
Adrian Bejan, the guy who created/discovered Constructal Theory doesn't seem
to be flakey at all:
[http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com/author.cgi?&link1=Search...](http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com/author.cgi?&link1=Search&link2=Search%20Results&AuthLastName=bejan&AuthFirstName=adrian&AuthMiddleName=&AuthMailnstName=&CountryID=-1&DisciplineID=0&id=533)
and <http://www.mems.duke.edu/fds/pratt/MEMS/faculty/abejan/>

~~~
magoghm
Although the "James Harry Potter Gold Medal" sounds kind of weird, it is a
real award:
[http://www.asme.org/Governance/Honors/SocietyAwards/James_Ha...](http://www.asme.org/Governance/Honors/SocietyAwards/James_Harry_Potter_Gold_Medal.cfm)

~~~
bitwize
"For outstanding snitch catching on the Quidditch pitch, I present to you..."

------
DaniFong
Heh.

The human body is a 'flow system far from equilibrium.' So while it's true
that if you dunk the feet of a healthy person in hot water and wait, the
temperature of their forehead may not increase by that much, it does not imply
that the temperature of their feet won't increase, it does not imply that the
forehead temperature of a hypothermic person won't increase, and it does not
imply that the forehead temperature of a healthy person exposed to a
flamethrower will not increase...

Does the Constructal law say anything about the environment were the Sun to
suddenly disappear?

------
vannevar
I wonder if Mr Eschenbach realizes that the effectiveness of America's entire
nuclear arsenal relies on the computer models he so casually dismisses.
Nuclear weapons testing is virtual, and has been since 1992.

Contrary to the article, climate models don't assume a relationship between
CO2 and global warming; rather, they reflect what we know about the physical
properties of CO2 in the atmosphere, as born out in laboratory experiments and
field measurements. The relationship with global warming emerges from the
models, not the other way around.

