When people who have proven themselves eager to take away other people's money and freedoms argue that they have "scientific" reasons to do the same, it's smart to be sceptical.
If, while robbing you at gunpoint, I tried to explain to you that I had good scientific reason to take even more of your money, you'd be stupid to believe me. If I don't have the morals not to rob you, I don't have the morals not to lie to you.
The communists used science to justify taking away freedom and increasing their own power. I don't see the current politicians and government scientists any differently.
As an illustration of the character and motivations of those who are advocating loudest that we do something about climate change I cite today's Drudgereport which has the following stories featured:
Canadian national newspaper calls for global one-child policy and cites China as "the world's leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict." http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438
I think it's just naive to accept the climate change argument as if it's motivated by a pure search for truth. Better to see it as an attempt by government to grab more power and limit freedom.
This article was not particularly insightful - it contained lots of classic proof by assertion. It doesn't treat seriously any of the valid criticisms of the current thought and research processes on global warming. That said, I'm not going to flag it because I think it deserves some thought and rebutting.
The author asks, "Why doesn't everyone believe in climate change when most experts do?" This is the start of his answer:
> It certainly predates the leaked emails (on which there is surely nothing more to say). Firstly we have the obvious psychological issues. We’re predisposed to undervalue adverse outcomes which are a long way off in the future, especially if we might be old or dead soon.
He starts with the assumption that climate change is real, and then starts trying to figure out why anyone wouldn't believe in it. There are a number of valid reasons to raise questions about what is happening in climate change, the magnitude of it, and how dangerous it might be. Here are a few:
First, if it's really happening to an extent as to require severe urgency, you ought to be able to say things like this: The current average temperatures and standard deviations of temperatures in these 50 regions are X and Y. We expect the temperatures to rise by A over this period of time in at least 35 of these regions, and the standard deviation to increase by B. If this does not happen over the next five years, that creates serious doubt in our claims and methodologies.
Instead, they're using a lot of backwards-looking, unfalsifiable propositions. A hurricane hits? They blame it on climate change. No hurricanes? Still, climate change.
Going further - very many, if not most cultures have believed that the world was in danger of ending during their lifetime. This is a recurring theme throughout history. Obviously, they've pretty much all been wrong so far. When people mention the very prominent global cooling that everyone was scared about, that I was taught to be scared about in school, they say, "Oh, scientists never believed that. It was just a media thing."
Then you've got things like the fact that there's pretty conclusive records of farming in Greenland as recently as 700 years ago, that died out due to the Earth getting colder.
There's a decent amount of literature and support for the idea that the Earth is coming out of an Ice Age. So if things are getting hotter, that's not even to say that it's a bad thing or that humans are causing the bulk of it.
Regardless, a lot of people seem to be concluded that global warming is happening, it's very severe, and we must do something immediately. The matter is no longer open for research and debate, because it is an emergency, and any dissenting views are unwelcome. They're pointing to experts as having a consensus, but there's not a consensus, and many of the experts have very recently been shown to do some serious scientific misconduct.
Some of the people who believed in widespread, extremely dangerous, human caused climate change are a bit more skeptical now that there's been the evidence of pretty severe scientific misconduct. (For instance, destroying data created that was publicly funded in response to a proper Freedom of Information request). So, the main argument for climate change is that there's an expert consensus, but now there's a show of serious scientific misconduct among the experts. Shouldn't everyone be a touch more skeptical after that? I mean, regardless of how convinced you were, don't you have to be less convinced now?
Then they get to things like this:
> More than all that, I can spot the same rhetorical themes re-emerging in climate change foolishness that you see in aids denialism, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists.
Look, smart people can go through data and claims. There are smart people who do not believe the current mainstream views of climate change. This does not make them "deniers" or purveyors of pseudo-science. The burden of proof is much more heavy on the people that wish to add expensive political controls to citizens' lives than it is on the people that don't want those controls. The current views on climate change are by no means proven - slinging mud by saying anyone who doesn't believe in climate change is gullible or an idea or a denier of science is not right, it is not correct, it is not proper, and ought to be an additional red flag that there's something not right with the official positions on climate change. Legitimate science does not conduct itself like this, because it does not have to.
I don't think Ben Goldacre is saying that valid criticism of climate change is bad. What he is saying is the vast majority of people who are criticizing climate change are doing so based on incorrect premises.
This is why I personally have problems with people who are anti-AGW. Any valid points they have are drowned out by hundreds of non-scientific people frothing at the mouth and spouting exaggerated, incorrect crap.
He believes climate change is occurring because of the expert consensus. Claiming that all several thousand experts are involved in a cover up is pretty classic conspiracy theory thinking...
This is why I personally have problems with people who are anti-AGW. Any valid points they have are drowned out by hundreds of non-scientific people frothing at the mouth and spouting exaggerated, incorrect crap.
This is true of both sides of any issue. Most proponents of AGW are also frothing at the mouth and spouting exaggerated, incorrect crap.
Al Gore, for example: "Look at this graph, which historically shows CO2 lagging climate change! This proves CO2 causes climate change!"
Or a girl I know who works for Greenpeace: "Look at all the wacky weather events we've been having, glaciers breaking off, the north pole melting, the [2004] tsunami! This proves global warming is real!" (Since she knows I'm a conservative, she refused to believed me when I tried to explain how Tsunami's work.)
Yeah, if you want, you can focus on the weakest arguments of the opposing side and say "many idiots agree with my opponents" while ignoring the idiots who agree with you. You'll never need to rethink your views this way. Or you can actually try to understand the issue and think carefully about it...But that's both difficult and threatening.
The funny thing is, in general I have no common cause with conservatives at all. Honestly, I can't stand them. But on the issue of global warming, I'm right with you. I have serious doubts about the whole thing.
Climate change - bringing people together! Who would have thought?
All I meant with that point is that it's hard to get to the meat of the argument with so many clearly false statements flying around.
I have yet to find any non-climatologists doing decent, unbiased, independent analysis of the climate change debate. As a scientist myself, this annoys me.
I've yet to see any decent, unbiased, independent analysis' of climate change from any side.
I've yet to see a single climatologist tackle the Milankovitch cycles and argue that it won't be the greater cause of global warming. I've yet to hear any evidence to disprove the theory, but I've heard lots of evidence to prove it and more just keeps on coming out.
So please, prey tell, why isn't insolation variations of over 20% causing global warming? Why is it the human emission of CO2 that is being attributed as the sole/major cause of global warming when it has been conclusively shown to have less than 1/10th the forcing effect of variations in the Milankovitch cycles? Please where is this magical heating coming from that CO2 is providing?
Why is the hundreds of years of work on the Milankovitch cycles being wholly ignored by climate scientists? Perhaps because it clearly states that there's likely to be a short-term ~5C raise in global temperatures regardless of what we do.
When climatologists actually acknowledge these facts, I'll then believe what they have to say. Until then everything I do to save energy, to recycle, everything is to help our physical environment and to prevent the export of our waste to third world countries that we're using as waste dumps for our hazardous materials. When climatologists acknowledge that regardless of what we do the planet will warm, and that it's in our best interest to prepare for these changes and not ignorantly claim we can defeat them, then I'll believe they're truly trying to help people and not make a cheap billion dollars at our expense.
> He believes climate change is occurring because of the expert consensus. Claiming that all several thousand experts are involved in a cover up is pretty classic conspiracy theory thinking...
This is exactly what I'm talking about. I said, precisely, "...and many of the experts have very recently been shown to do some serious scientific misconduct."
Is this conspiracy theorizing? No.
A lot of them just participated in some actions that are almost universally regarded as scientific misconduct, such as destroying data rather than providing it for attempts at falsifying. This was many of the formerly respected and important climate change scientists.
I gave a number of my concerns with the current research and views on global warming, saying that people are acting like the matter is no longer open to debate and discussion. And you responded that there's "hundreds of non-scientific people frothing at the mouth and spouting exaggerated, incorrect crap." And saying I claimed there's a massive cover up conspiracy, when I said no such thing. This is acting like the matter is no longer open to debate and discussion.
There are valid concerns with the state of the science. I am not frothing at the mouth spouting exaggerated, incorrect crap. I am not conspiracy theorizing. The matter is by no means concluded. This does not make me or others who are not convinced into deniers, or pseudo-scientists, or "non-scientific people frothing at the mouth". Immediately writing off anyone who isn't convinced in climate change does not help its cause - it sets off red flags in people who are not convinced and wish to look closer at the science.
Your posts come across as overly defensive, which doesn't help your argument. I am not attacking you, yet you seem to believe I am.
The UEA Climate Research Unit is a small research organization, consisting of maybe 20-30 climatologists at most. (I can't check. They took their web site down.) Yet you claim that the international consensus of 2000-3000 scientists is rendered invalid by maybe 1% of them employing dubious methods.
I'm aware that the CRU dataset is an important one in climate research, but if this was truly a catastrophic problem with the conclusion, then I would expect to see hundreds of scientists withdrawing their opinions. Although some scientists have done this, there have not been many, and I understand this is more of a defensive move.
It is proven by now that the consensus is partially manufactured. The CRU emails reveal attempting to control the debate via illegitimate means: trying to shut down journals which publish skeptics, hiding data to prevent skeptics from finding flaws, and ousting skeptics from professional societies, removing editors who allow opposing views to be published.
A consensus of rational people is informative. A consensus of politics is not. There is considerable evidence that we have the latter rather than the former.
> You are not an expert, yet you disagree with the expert consensus, and because of that you are most likely wrong. It has always been that way.
1. When you say consensus, there's not a consensus in climate change the way there's a consensus about the composition of water in chemistry. The are competing theories and holes in the current theories. Asserting that there is a consensus does not create a consensus.
2. You do not need to be an expert to analyze and look at published primary source papers, secondary source papers, and popular writing. I've done so, a little bit. By no means is the current worldview proven. I gave a number of my concerns in the original post. Most of them have come from talking to other scientists who also do not agree with the general views and policy recommendations of the prominent climate change group.
3. I'm not even disagreeing with the general, mainstream view completely - I don't know what's happening, to what extent, how dangerous it is, and why it's happening. There haven't been falsifiable claims about what's going to happen in the short term that can be tested. I would like to see more research and debate.
> Mainstream views are correct more often than not.
This is both not true and extremely dangerous.
Here are a few examples off the top of my head, from a variety of fields: Mercantalism, geocentric/heliocentric universe, price controls, Newtonian Mechanics, war on drugs, absolute monarchy, papal infaliability, fascism, racism, slavery, human sacrifices, animal sacrifices, wifebeating, blood feuds, honor feuds, dueling, spoils system, aggressive warfare, appeasement, reparations... all mainstream views at one point. Some are relatively harmless, like people insisting that Earth was the center of the universe. Some have resulted in very poor social engineering, like mercantalism and price controls. And some of them have been downright horrible.
The policy recommendations by climate change scientists probably have the potential to be as damaging as mercantalism was, if implemented improperly. Mercantalism made the citizens in mercantalist countries live worse, poorer lives, with more control, and no benefits. It led to a reduction in prosperty and quality of life in mercantalist countries, and a rise of prosperity and quality of life in non-mercantalist countries. And this was the dominant mainstream view of economics for a very long time in Europe. Much longer than the current views on climate change have been around.
You need to question authority more in scientific fields. Actually, one thing that stands out very strongly to me is from Richard Feynman's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" When his first wife got very sick, he looked up her symptoms in a medical book. She matched a particular disease exactly, and there were recommendations on what to do.
The doctors diagnosed her with everything except this particular disease, and Feynman thought to himself, "Well, it seems so obvious that it's this, but if it's obvious to me, it'd be obvious to them, right? So it must be something else." Two years and four doctors later, his original diagnosis by matching her symptoms to a book were right, and the doctors were wrong. He was furious. He said he promised to question experts much more for the rest of his life after that.
"This article was not particularly insightful - it contained lots of classic proof by assertion. It doesn't treat seriously any of the valid criticisms of the current thought and research processes on global warming. That said, I'm not going to flag it because I think it deserves some thought and rebutting."
It's not really an article about climate change. Ben Goldacre's field is more to do with the public perception of science. In that light, making the assumption that the "scientists in charge" are correct isn't invalid, although he would have done well to point it out as an explicit assumption. However, I would note that your concerns have largely been addressed, both in his article and in the general field.
"First, if it's really happening to an extent as to require severe urgency, you ought to be able to say things like this: The current average temperatures and standard deviations of temperatures in these 50 regions are X and Y. We expect the temperatures to rise by A over this period of time in at least 35 of these regions, and the standard deviation to increase by B. If this does not happen over the next five years, that creates serious doubt in our claims and methodologies."
This has been done, in several ways. A prediction has been made that, if we limit our total CO2 emissions to (from memory) 650GT between now and 2050, the anthropogenic portion of global warming will be limited to 2 degrees. This is falsifiable. Predictions of sea-level rise over the shorter term have also been made. These are falsifiable.
"Going further - very many, if not most cultures have believed that the world was in danger of ending during their lifetime. This is a recurring theme throughout history. Obviously, they've pretty much all been wrong so far. When people mention the very prominent global cooling that everyone was scared about, that I was taught to be scared about in school, they say, "Oh, scientists never believed that. It was just a media thing.""
I suspected global cooling would come up. It always does. Taking a look at one of the lists of refutations mentioned in the article comes up with http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-gl...; however my standard response is that changing one's opinion on the basis of new data and new thinking is called "progress," not "evidence that scientists can't be trusted."
"Then you've got things like the fact that there's pretty conclusive records of farming in Greenland as recently as 700 years ago, that died out due to the Earth getting colder."
There's farming on Greenland now.
"They're pointing to experts as having a consensus, but there's not a consensus, and many of the experts have very recently been shown to do some serious scientific misconduct."
Except they haven't. At all. They may have said some stupid things, but that's a different thing entirely. There was no event of "destroying data in response to an FOI request," - or if there was, there's no direct evidence of it in the leaked emails. And yes, I have read them.
"The burden of proof is much more heavy on the people that wish to add expensive political controls to citizens' lives than it is on the people that don't want those controls."
No, the burden of proof is on those who want to show that the null hypothesis, that human-produced CO2 has the potential to cause direct harm through accelerated warming, is incorrect. The reason this is the null hypothesis isn't because the scientists say so, it's because it's the best physical model we have.
A prediction has been made that, if we limit our total CO2 emissions to (from memory) 650GT between now and 2050, the anthropogenic portion of global warming will be limited to 2 degrees. This is falsifiable.
Great. It only takes 40 years! And what kind of model do you use to determine the anthropogenic portion of global warming, given that the whole argument boils down to how you, uh, determine it. ("If we ban vaccines, I can assure you that the number of autistic children born due to vaccines will drop.")
Don't even get started with Austism and vaccines... it has been shown over and over again that there is no link between vaccines and autism. (Plus, the claim was that the children were born normally and then became autistic when given the vaccine)
How about this one: If we ban vaccines, I can assure you that the number of children that die each year from diseases you've forgotten about (measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio) will be so high that everyone who clamored for the ban in the first place will say "Who thought this was a good idea? Certainly not me!"
Except they haven't. At all. They may have said some stupid things, but that's a different thing entirely. There was no event of "destroying data in response to an FOI request," - or if there was, there's no direct evidence of it in the leaked emails. And yes, I have read them.
You chose your words very carefully.
Emails (regarding AR4) were deleted. Phil Jones did say "I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone". But yes, it's true no one admitted to deleting the files that later turned up missing.
It's not enough evidence to convict them in court, but it is enough evidence for the rest of us not to trust them.
No, the burden of proof is on those who want to show that the null hypothesis, that human-produced CO2 has the potential to cause direct harm through accelerated warming, is incorrect. The reason this is the null hypothesis isn't because the scientists say so, it's because it's the best physical model we have.
Your comment reflects a complete lack of knowledge of how the scientific process works.
a) Science can't tell you what the correct null hypothesis is. That's a completely subjective matter.
b) When engaging in hypothesis testing, the standard procedure is to take the opposite of what you want to prove as your null hypothesis. Trying to prove cigarettes cause cancer? Then you take "cigarettes don't cause cancer" as your null hypothesis.
If you are taking AGW as the null hypothesis, you are assuming that which you need to prove.
This was a great reply - very factual, polite, and informative - thank you.
Here's my issues:
1. This has been done, in several ways. A prediction has been made that, if we limit our total CO2 emissions to (from memory) 650GT between now and 2050, the anthropogenic portion of global warming will be limited to 2 degrees. This is falsifiable.
I am always skeptical, in any field, over a claim made over a 50 year timespan. Actually, any predictions made over specifically a 30 to 60 year timespan set off alarms for me. It's the longest timespan that will occur within your own life, so it gains some credibility, but you're not really going to be held accountable to it. Similar claims are made when recommending finance policies, for instance. It's far enough out that you can't test and falsify before taking the recommended course of action.
2. Predictions of sea-level rise over the shorter term have also been made. These are falsifiable.
This would be fantastic, this is exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for and haven't seen. Do you have links?
3. There was no event of "destroying data in response to an FOI request," - or if there was, there's no direct evidence of it in the leaked emails.
"SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based."
"The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation."
"In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”"
4. No, the burden of proof is on those who want to show that the null hypothesis, that human-produced CO2 has the potential to cause direct harm through accelerated warming, is incorrect. The reason this is the null hypothesis isn't because the scientists say so, it's because it's the best physical model we have.
This was actually quite an insightful point, which I'll think about. The models right now come across incomplete at best, so spending trillions on that risks destroying a lot of health, wealth, happiness that those resources could be deployed to instead. If there's global warming, what's the extent of it? How much is caused by humans? What are the pros and cons of climate change? And so on. These questions aren't answered, and there's recommendations for trillions of dollars of resources and great amounts of social and economic controls to be put in place. I tend to think the burden of proof on that should be extremely high, but your point about our CO2 models is interesting and I'll think it over.
The models right now come across incomplete at best, so spending trillions on that risks destroying a lot of health, wealth, happiness that those resources could be deployed to instead. If there's global warming, what's the extent of it? How much is caused by humans? What are the pros and cons of climate change? And so on. These questions aren't answered, and there's recommendations for trillions of dollars of resources
My first thought (speaking as a scientist myself) was that ofcourse these models are incomplete. Climate change is difficult. Hell, predicting the weather with any degree of accuracy 7 days out is difficult. To put together a cohesive document spanning hundreds (thousands?) of scientists and have them all agree with its contents seems like an almost impossible task for me to envision. I have trouble agreeing with my own co-workers sometimes and we work on the same funded project!
The argument about spending the money elsewhere is complete bull. Have you ever applied for government grants... lets say from the NSF? The money is always globally appropriated and the grants are always applicable to many fields. You don't get funded based on opinion. You get funded over a 30-40 page proposal that you clearly state your objectives and what you will use the money for. Then you are put through a thorough vetting process where the granters look at ALL the proposals being made (undoubtedly there are hundreds) and choose the one that meets their criteria the best. They also look at the track record of each of the groups based on prior research and the like. On some governmental projects, they'll even tell you certain objectives that you propose which they will not fund.
People make the same point about stem cell research and it drives me crazy.
There is always benefits to funding basic scientific research. Just look at the output from Fermilab and CERN over the last 20 years--MRIs and the Internet most notably.
But getting back to the climate change models. These are enormous problems to tackle. They have supercomputers chugging on data 24-7. Just envision trying to track cloud formation to see if there is a pattern in storms-- you've got to find some way to measure all that and then you have to compute it to form a predictive model. I'm almost certain there will be missing or omitted data. Science is not clean.
Regarding 3. There was no event of "destroying data in response to an FOI request," - or if there was, there's no direct evidence of it in the leaked emails.
Your response doesn't show that the data was destroyed in response to the FOI request, only that the FOI request got the response that it had been destroyed.
Other than that you made some very good points with a cool head, and I appreciated them.
If, while robbing you at gunpoint, I tried to explain to you that I had good scientific reason to take even more of your money, you'd be stupid to believe me. If I don't have the morals not to rob you, I don't have the morals not to lie to you.
The communists used science to justify taking away freedom and increasing their own power. I don't see the current politicians and government scientists any differently.