
Should We Trust the Climate Models? - jahud
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/climate-change/should-we-trust-the-climate-models-part-1-of-3/
======
kchamplewski
Worth noting that the Institute for Energy Research was founded by the ex-
director of public policy for Enron, and has received donations from the likes
of ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, so while this post may
well contain valid points, it produced by an organization likely to have a bit
of a conflict of interest when it comes to anthropogenic climate change.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I think this really is not worth noting and the rapid appearance of a bunch of
astroturfing comments along these lines is really disappointing.

This post deserves to be dealt with on its own, and it’s perfectly fine as a
statistical commentary on these graphs.

It happens to be wrong in the conclusion, but not for any kind of political
bias-based reason.

If you aren’t willing to engage with people who hold a different view and have
power to stop your preferred policies, why would expect them to do the same
for you, and why would you expect your policies to ever be enacted?

You’re looking for reasons to dismiss something on purely superficial grounds,
and effectively disallowing any possibility that certain groups could actually
present data that forces you to change your beliefs.

It strikes me as even worse and more dangerous dogmatism than what comes out
of the right-wing climate denying think tanks.

~~~
carapace
> I think this really is not worth noting and the rapid appearance of a bunch
> of astroturfing comments along these lines is really disappointing.

Not at all, IMO, it was the first thing that occurred to me: "Sounds like the
title of a hit piece. I wonder who wrote it?" Cf.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines)
etc...

\- - - -

"What is the most important part of any message?"

"The name of the messenger."

~~~
mlthoughts2018
So in some superficial judgement, you decided it must be a hit piece without
reading it and then confirmation-bias-googled some funding sources to
reinforce your view still without reading it, and then use a rhetorical quip
to act like this is justified?

It seems like you’re just admitting to what I claimed. You dismiss things
based on superficial details but don’t admit they are superficial.

To be very clear, I don’t agree with the OP post at all, but it was
thoughtfully written and the point about statistical significance being very
misleading for inference goals is really valid, especially for climate
predictions.

It actually takes some statistical effort to point out why the posts
conclusions aren’t valid (eg it’s the trend of temperature increase that
affects policy, not the nearness of the observations to the model’s mean
prediction).

As someone who works professionally in statistics, I say this post is of
higher quality than a large amount of even published research, especially in
social science, and seems like fair un-extreme skepticism that deserves to be
honestly and sincerely engaged with, and not dismissed out of hand because you
spent 5 seconds googling the buzzword name of a funding entity you dislike.

~~~
carapace
There's only so much time in the day, and there's so much information,
presented in so many ways, and it's so common for these sorts of things to be
biased to the point of propaganda, that I've developed a heuristic that says
(in this case) I shouldn't waste my time with this particular piece.

However,

> As someone who works professionally in statistics, I say this post is of
> higher quality than a large amount of even published research, especially in
> social science

...this makes me sit up and take notice. I'll go back and actually read the
thing now.

\- - - -

I got as far as the first paragraph:

> As an economist who writes on climate change policy, my usual stance is to
> stipulate the so-called “consensus” physical science (as codified for
> example in UN and US government reports), and show how the calls for massive
> carbon taxes and direct regulations still do not follow. For an example of
> this discrepancy that I often mention, William Nordhaus recently won the
> Nobel Prize for his work on climate change economics, and he calibrated his
> model to match what the UN’s IPCC said about various facts of physical
> science, such as the global temperature’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas
> emissions, etc. Even so, Nordhaus’ Nobel-winning work shows that governments
> doing nothing would be better for human welfare than trying to hit the UN’s
> latest goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Yeah, thoughtfully written crazy-talk waste-of-time bullshit. Like a wedding
cake made out of Crisco, I'm sorry I even tasted it.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
It sure seems like you did not try to sincerely read it. That paragraph has
virtually nothing to do with the rest of the post. It just reinforces that you
seem to only consider opinions or arguments that start out from a position you
already agree with, and are happy to dismiss things without reading them if
you don’t.

~~~
carapace
> It sure seems like you did not try to sincerely read it.

I started out sincerely and I did dig a little further than I indicated, but
the author failed another two heuristics already in the first paragraph.
Specifically:

> my usual stance is to stipulate the so-called “consensus” physical science

I read a lot of fringe science (crackpots) for fun and to scan for up-and-
coming new science/tech, and that's exactly the kind of sentence a crackpot
writes. He uses "so-called" _and_ scare quotes for the idea of consensus
physical science. That's how crackpots talk. Not damning in itself, but a very
bad sign.

Then:

> Nordhaus’ Nobel-winning work shows that governments doing nothing would be
> better for human welfare than trying to hit the UN’s latest goal of limiting
> warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Now that is classic "black is white; up is down" inverted-logic propaganda.
It's straight out of the playbook.

Even so, I clicked through to see wtf he's talking about [1], and he's got
some table (Table 4 on [1]) and he says:

> The first row of the table shows what the DICE model—as of its 2007
> calibration—estimated would happen if the governments of the world took no
> major action to arrest greenhouse gas emissions. There would be significant
> future environmental damages, which would have a present-discounted value of
> $22.55 trillion.

So, ouch, right? But then he says:

> In contrast, the second row shows what would happen if the governments
> implemented an optimal carbon tax. Because emissions would drop, future
> environmental damages would fall as well; that’s why the PDV of such damage
> would be only $17.31 trillion. However, even though the gross benefits of
> the optimal carbon tax would be some $5 trillion as a result (because of the
> reduction in environmental harms), these gross benefits would have to be
> offset by the drag on conventional economic growth, or what is called
> “abatement costs.” Those come in at a hefty $2.20 trillion (in PDV terms),
> so that the net benefits of even the optimal carbon tax would be “only”
> $3.07 trillion.

Notice that he's talking about _economic_ benefits? "$5 trillion ... reduction
in environmental harms" ... that's endangered species that didn't go extinct,
forests and rivers and seas that aren't cut down or dried up or poisoned,
fisheries that haven't collapsed. Ya feel?

So there it is. When he says "governments doing nothing would be better for
human welfare than trying to hit the UN’s latest goal of limiting warming to
1.5 degrees Celsius" he actually means the welfare of the economy. The global
_ecology_ is still fucked to the tune of $22,550,000,000,000 in the do-nothing
scenario.

Frankly, I find it absurd.

It's reminds me of that New Yorker cartoon, "Yes, the planet got destroyed.
But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for
shareholders."
[https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995?verso=true](https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995?verso=true)

So, already in the first paragraph, he's shown that he's a propagandist who
values money over living things. And so, according to my own world view, I can
safely discount _anything_ he has to say on the subject. The saddest part is
that I don't doubt that he's sincere and thinks of himself as a good person.
(He's not twirling his mustache and cackling evilly, eh?) But I'm not going to
waste my time reading his screed. As I said, there is too much other, higher-
quality information in the world today, and only so much time to read it.

> That paragraph has virtually nothing to do with the rest of the post.

Then what is it doing there? Not to beat up on the guy but that's another
strike against him as a writer, no?

> It just reinforces that you seem to only consider opinions or arguments that
> start out from a position you already agree with, and are happy to dismiss
> things without reading them if you don’t.

I can understand why it seemed that way but it's just not true. The
fundamental rule of Information Theory says that the _unpredictability_ of a
message is a measure of its information content. I actually seek out
information that contradicts or modifies my current models of the world. This
article isn't that. (I mean, you can predict what he's going to say from the
title alone. As I did, successfully.)

You said yourself that you don't agree with the conclusions of the article, so
what exactly am I missing by skipping it? I mean I could spend that time
reading up on statistics or something, eh?

In any event, well met, and have a Happy New Year.

[1]
[https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/MurphyNordhaus...](https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/MurphyNordhaus.html)

------
michaelcampbell
> The IER is the successor organization to the Institute for Humane Studies of
> Texas, an advocacy group established in 1984 by billionaire businessman and
> political donor Charles Koch. [1]

Also, evidently partially funded by Exxon and associate with Robert P Murphy,
who: "has written articles expressing support for a literal interpretation of
the Bible and skepticism of evolutionary theory."

Color me not surprised.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P._Murphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P._Murphy)

------
struct
I think the problem with all these analyses is that yes, all models are wrong,
but some are useful. We spent trillions and totally transformed our society in
the 20th century, not really based on much sound economic analysis (and
certainly not because it was the cheapest thing we could have done), because
the economy serves human society and not the other way around. Of course it’s
cheaper to do nothing about the externality of climate change, but it doesn’t
do the economy or us any good to ignore it. And a climate model is just a
discussion point about the uncertainty we’re introducing to our future
prosperity - what might happen, how bad could it be?

------
holaatme
The name of this think tank is incredibly misleading. A quick search shows
that they are in fact bank rolled by the Koch brothers.
[https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Energy_R...](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Energy_Research)

They are well known for spinning anti renewable bullshit.

------
mlthoughts2018
The satellite observation graph does not even give a reason to think there is
a linear upward trend at all.

However, despite valid points about the miscalibration of the models for the
surface anomaly graph (those models overpredict effect on anomaly), the
observed data still do _obviously_ support a strong positive linear effect in
raising temperature over the past 20 years.

It may be that climate models are involving nonlinear effects that experience
difficult to explain lags in the real atmosphere. But either way I’d say the
dramatic _trend_ in the observations is the most salient thing, and the 95%
envelope is really not too important for the model’s inference goals.

I’d like to see more Bayesian models applied to this.

------
chrome-fusion
This guy gets funding from Exxon [https://www.desmogblog.com/robert-p-
murphy](https://www.desmogblog.com/robert-p-murphy)

------
mike_hock
Captcha to view.

Goodbye.

------
lidHanteyk
tl;dr: Yes.

