Climate Change Revisited

George Rebane

Scientific truth is not the product of a democratic process.  All noteworthy scientific discoveries and engineering developments were made by loners swimming against the tide of well-known and accepted knowledge.  The more important and greater the discovery, the more it was at odds with the then current establishment.  But as we have seen repeatedly, it only takes one person’s correct argument to overturn the considered wisdom of the preceding age.

Today we have at least two camps on climate change – by far the largest are the true believers, or more properly, Post-Enquiry Adherents (PEAs) who enthusiastically answer YES! to all of the Five Questions about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).  These 5Qs were originally published in ‘The Question of Anthropogenic Global Warming’ and are repeated below –

1. Is the current macro-climate of the earth historically unusual?
2. Should the current dynamics of earth’s macro-climate be a cause for alarm about the future of humankind?
3. Assuming that the answers to #1 and #2 are both positive, to what extent are the dynamics of earth’s macro-climate the result of human activity?
4. Assuming that the answers to #1, 2, and 3 are all indicative, do we yet know what to do to guarantee that the dire predictions or something worse will not be the result of our planned intervention?
5. Assuming that the answers to #1, 2, 3, and 4 are all supportive, is there anything that we humans are now prepared to do collectively to change the forecasted catastrophe for humankind?   

The smaller, rapidly growing camp is comprised of the Skeptics who are not yet prepared to accept the sweeping conclusions of the PEAs but continue to examine the data presented by both sides.  This intolerable state of continued enquiry prompts the PEAs to label the Skeptics as the more pejorative ‘Deniers’.  Deniers has historically been attached to backward people known beyond debate to be in error, hence the final mantra of the PEAs – “The debate is over.”  It makes one think that perhaps there is another agenda behind the rush to accept and ‘do something, anything!’ about the certain advent of AGW.

In matters of science the debate is never over, and historically those seeking to end scientific debate have inevitably been shown to be wrong.  Even the debate on Newton’s ‘law of gravity’ is not yet over, and may today be entering into one of its most enlightening and revealing phases. That the 5Qs are so deeply disturbing to PEAs indicates, to me, that they either never considered this kind of structured enquiry or fear where its pursuit would ultimately lead them.

The most worthy attempt for a call to arms a global response to global warming, that I have seen, is summarized in a video by a certain “johnq5” that casts the argument in terms of utility and decision theory.  The approach, though laudable, is in error due to its ‘hidden’ acceptance of priors (tenets believed to be axiomatically true before discourse starts), and its incomplete and over-simplified decision structure.  A more comprehensive and therefore useful approach would be to begin with the 5Qs laid out into a decision tree that can capture the uncertainties related to our current state of knowledge.  In a future piece I will illustrate that exercise.

Another interesting facet of the ongoing controversy (it’s no longer a debate since the PEAs do not wish there to be one) invisible to the great unwashed is that the scientific arguments presented by the Skeptics are never answered per se, i.e. addressing the essence of the science or data-based arguments.  Instead the PEA’s response is simply drawn from a 1) personal attack on the Skeptic, 2) attack on the person(s) originating the data, and/or 3) ignoring the argument and simply trotting out one of the PEA holy cows – e.g. the notorious ‘hockey stick’, or the number of authors of the IPCC report, or the names of the societies/institutions which have issued policy statements in support of anthropogenic global warming.  The PEAs consider such responses so logically compelling that nothing more need be said to return the still recalcitrant Skeptic into the padded cell of the Deniers.

As a Skeptic trained in science - particularly in the technologies of Bayesian decision theory, modeling of complex dynamic systems, and with a degree in physics thrown in – given the evidence I have seen, I am not prepared to join the PEAs, and strongly believe that the climate change debate must be rejoined within the bounds of reason as defined by the teachings of western civilization.

On the two powerful legs of Occam’s razor and falsifiability, it was western science that started Mankind’s epic march toward understanding the universe.  Occam prescribed that if two competing theories could each explain the (hopefully repeatable) observations, then we should accept and proceed with the simpler of the two.  Falsifiability is the strong prerequisite of a theory that requires it to produce explicit ‘true’ statements the negation of which by experiment would negate the theory.  In short, if what you propose is such that there is no way to disprove it, then your proposal is an article of faith and not of science.

While not a Keynesian, I am among those in his debt for the oft-quoted reply to a reporter who pointed out an inconstancy in Lord Keynes’ pronouncements – “When new data is presented to me, I change my mind.  What do you do?”  Along with many other AGW skeptics, I await the new data.

Comments

[Russ]

Well said George! At NC Media Watch I try to present climate data that most people can understand, mostly in visual graphics. Data/graphics they can use to make their own decisions and not have to rely on what is reported in the press by sycophant global warming believers. PEAs who rely on computer models, rather than real world data collected from satellites, sounding balloons, ice cores, lake bottom and ocean cores, etc.. The data is there for those who are willing to look. Anthony Watts' What Up With That is also a good source of easily understood climate data and climate change information.

[Anna Haynes]

(Related: this comment of mine on one of George's earlier posts pointed out the unsavory intellectual company he's keeping, on this issue.)

> "The smaller, rapidly growing camp is comprised of the Skeptics"

Fascinating. George, does this mean that you don't accept that a scientific consensus exists? And the "rapidly growing camp"...what evidence do you have for this, or did you pull it from where I think?

> "historically those seeking to end scientific debate have inevitably been shown to be wrong."

Ah. You mean the debates over whether the earth is round and whether it goes around the sun? Or do you mean the "does tobacco cause cancer?" controversy?

> "the scientific arguments presented by the Skeptics are never answered per se"

False. See the claims and their refutations in How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic or in Skeptical Science. And you'd be able to see them in the scientific literature, if any of their claims passed muster enough to get there. But they don't; from Skeptical Science here:
"scientists can have their opinions but they need to back it up with empirical evidence and research that survives the peer review process. A survey of all peer reviewed abstracts on the subject "global climate change" published between 1993 and 2003 show that not a single paper rejected the consensus position that global warming is man caused."

> "Occam prescribed that if two competing theories could each explain the (hopefully repeatable) observations, then we should accept and proceed with the simpler of the two."

Would it be simpler to accept that two local retired engineers (backed up by an oil-industry-funded public relations movement with past ties to the tobacco industry) have a better handle on climatology than the whole assemblage of working&publishing scientists in climatology along with the Academia Brasiliera de Ciências,Royal Society of Canada,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Academié des Sciences (France),Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany),Indian National Science Academy,Accademia dei Lincei,Science Council of Japan,Russian Academy of Sciences,Royal Society (United Kingdom),National Academy of Sciences (United States of America),Australian Academy of Sciences,Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts,Caribbean Academy of Sciences,Indonesian Academy of Sciences,Royal Irish Academy,Academy of Sciences Malaysia,Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand,Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies,National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,National Academy of Sciences,State of the Canadian Cryosphere,Environmental Protection Agency,Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS),American Geophysical Union,American Institute of Physics,National Center for Atmospheric Research,American Meteorological Society,Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society?

On Planet Zortar, maybe. Here on earth, I don't think so.

> "'When new data is presented to me, I change my mind. What do you do?' Along with many other AGW skeptics, I await the new data."

while (LifeGoesOn)
{
AwaitNewData();
}

Perhaps you should add OpenMindAndThink();

[Anna Haynes]

re Russ's

> "At NC Media Watch I try to present climate data that most people can understand, mostly in visual graphics. "

Aren't you ashamed to be doing this, Russ? Just the tiniest bit?

Open Mind's 19 graphs showing evidence of global warming

I refuted a month of Russ Steele's denialism claims in his NC Media Watch blog in September; he edited or deleted some of my comments, but you may be able to get a flavor from those that remain.

[George Rebane]

Apropos the points I made in this piece, I thank Anna Haynes for immediately providing Exhibit A in her two comments above. As perhaps the local posterchild for the Post-Enquiry Adherents, she goes down the checklist and even includes personal slurs - e.g. that I am an unthinking closed-minded Denier who consorts with "unsavory" intellectuals like Russ Steele of NC Media Watch puts a bow on it. So there, dear Reader, is the climate change debate - in the raw, un-nuanced, and in a nutshell.

[James Currier]

I'm suprised at the level of snarky debate here! So I'll just ignore it.

In my selfish desire to learn I have two questions:

1) What data are you waiting for? In other words, what set of data, if arrived at by appropriate scientific methods, would convinve you that there is a problem and that the problem is cause by homo sapien?

2) What data are the people who believe in man-made global warming presenting that they THINK is conclusive that you find NOT conclusive? In other words, if you are still waiting for data, what data do the other people, the ones that have ALSO pledged themselves to scientific inquiry from the organizations listed above, have that has made them so convinced? What data has butressed this mass delusion?

Thanks, if you have time to anwswer!
James

[Anna Haynes]

George, I'd like to say two things about your characterization of my comments as
> "she... includes personal slurs...- e.g. that I am an unthinking closed-minded Denier who consorts with "unsavory" intellectuals like Russ Steele "

First -
re the "unthinking closed-minded Denier" characterization, I believe the GW evidence I provided above (along with the fact that you chose not to address any of it) makes this case for me.

Second -
You are mistaken - perhaps deliberately, perhaps not - in asserting that I said you "consort with "unsavory" intellectuals like Russ Steele" - if you had followed the link I provided to the 'unsavory' comment (to one of your recent blog posts), you'll see that it's about Fred Singer ("George, if you Google "Fred Singer" "peer reviewed" retired denial you'll find that maybe you don't want to associate yourself too closely with Mr. Singer."), not about Mr. Steele.

Please don't put words into my mouth.

[Russ]

Well, distortion seem to be Anna's mode. Anna wrote "I refuted a month of Russ Steele's denialism claims in his NC Media Watch blog in September; he edited or deleted some of my comments, but you may be able to get a flavor from those that remain."

Let set the record straight. I deleted one, let me repeat ONE comment by accident. Anna put a persons name in a post and I got an e-mail from that person asking that his full name not be used. I was removing his full name, when I hit the delete key, thinking I was deleting the highlighted text. I am doing this on my new cellphone rather than my larger screen laptop. It was unfortunate that the whole post was deleted, rather than the highlighted text. Damn! Now I am being accused of doing some thing dastardly by Anna. I explained the situation to Anna is and e-mail, but she can get more milage from her lefty friends by claiming I was distorting when she said. Oh well, now you know the rest of the story.

As for refuting "a months of Russ Steele's denialism," she never address the data I presented, she just attacked the data source, rather then demonstrating why the data I was presenting was wrong, how it was wrong, and provide a more reliable data set. Hey, I can change my mind. But, now unless the argument is based on real world, validated, and audited data. If the study cannot be replicated by a third party, or it is from model that cannot be verified for an 100 plus years of climate measurements, then they have no credit with me. Anna was unable to meet that verification challenge. If you agree with her claim the is a consensus that humans are the major cause for global warming, then you are subscribing to a political statement, not science. As a PHd scientist Anna should know that science is always about questioning and proof. Where is her proof, belief is not proof, it is a religious statement.

[Anna Haynes]

Russ Steele said above:

> "distortion seem to be Anna's mode. Anna wrote: '...Russ Steele...edited or deleted some of my comments...' Let set the record straight. I deleted one, let me repeat ONE comment by accident."

Russ, this appears to be projection.

Perhaps you deleted ONE comment by accident, but you never approved at least two others I wrote and submitted; I consider this to be 'deleting' my submissions.
I'd posted on NCFocus about your (in)actions regarding these two comments, here and here ("Others appear to have been deep-sixed..."), and I'd emailed you asking what happened, the first time I noticed it occurring. You had responded "I plan to post your comments... but I just need some time to think through what you wrote." (which is not the purpose of comment moderation, by the way), but you never did post these 2, and perhaps others as well. (I'd rather not go back and dig through to find which of my other comments were never approved, got better things to do with my time.)

Russ, please don't overlook or distort the published record...as you've also done with your characterization of my September comments on your blog ("she never address the data I presented") - yes, some of my comments point out the questionable track records of your 'authorities' and their oil industry funding - it is like shooting fish in a barrel - but others rebut the claims you're making.

(If anyone but Russ and George and me is reading this, please, read some of the September comments - in particular this one("...I did look up some references addressing these (unreferenced) assertions...") - and note that it directly addresses his claims and that he didn't reply to it.)
(his blog's comments are in reverse chronological order, most recent is at the top of the pile)

Russ and George, why do you do this? Is it worth the short-term benefit, to trash your grandchildrens' home? Think about what Mike Huckabee has to say -

"The most important thing about global warming is this:
Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it. It's the old Boy Scout rule of the campsite: You leave the campsite in better shape than you found it. I believe that even our responsibility to God means that we have to be good stewards of this Earth, be good caretakers of the natural resources that don't belong to us, we just get to use them. We have no right to abuse them."

Please, wake up - your grandchildren's house is burning.

[Anna Haynes]

p.s. re

"Anna should know that science is always about questioning and proof. Where is her proof"

Spoken like a mathematician or an engineer - not like a scientist.

Science is about the weight of the evidence, not about proof. The weight of the evidence is that we are in deep trouble and we need to start working now (since yesterday's no longer an option) to address it.

[Anna Haynes]

And one more thing - I just want to draw attention to a comment by James Currier, ("In my selfish desire to learn I have two questions..."), that got buried back up here

I'd be interested in seeing James's questions answered too.

[Anna Haynes]

(sorry, me again. one small correction, I was mistaken - Russ's blog posts are not reverse-chronologically ordered, most recent comment is at the bottom.)

(and if anyone's reading this in future, an fyi - like Mr. Steele, Dr. Rebane also has comment moderation enabled on his blog, which means comments don't appear until after he approves them, which means a delay of potentially hours, which means commenters often won't see (so will appear to be ignoring) a somewhat earlier comment, that hadn't yet been approved.)

[Russ]

Anna is right, I did not post two of her comments. They were about hypothetical questions and I had told her that I would not answer hypothetical questions, yet she persisted and I chose to not post the comment. In a follow up post, I told her I was not answering her hypothetical questions. What additional information did she need? What did she not understand about NO hypotheticals?

[Anna Haynes]

> "I did not post two of her comments. They were about hypothetical questions "

For the record, this is false. Russ likely deleted additional comments of mine that asked hypothetical Qs - not being a scientist, he sees hypothetical Qs as traps not tools - but these didn't - in a comment above ("I[Anna]'d posted on NCFocus about your [Russ's] (in)actions regarding these two comments, here and here") I linked to my blog where I'd posted the comments he'd deep-sixed. Should anyone care to look, and see if they look hypothetical to you, you can. Probably not worth your time; at this point, not worth mine either.

To move on to something more constructive - George, will you be answering James Currier's 2 questions above? [Yes. gjr]

[Russ]

OK, to help Anna and Jeff P. keep up I have turned off the moderation feature on my blog, you get the raw facts, no lag time and no possible missing comments.
Since Anna is concerned I did not answer her claim that the satellite data is contaminated and is not relevant to the global warming discussion, I will be posting on this issue at NC Media Watch in the near future. In the mean time take a look at how the surface record has been contaminated. We have a simple example right here in Nevada City. No significant global warming in Nevada City and Grass Valley between 1950 and 2000.

[Anna Haynes]

And George Rebane and Russ Steele, I'd like an apology from each of you.

George, for falsely stating that I had referred to Russ Steele as an "unsavory intellectual" (IMO your "she goes through the checklist" is also misleading, but since it's vague I'll leave it up to you whether you want to apologize for that);

and Russ, for saying "distortion seem to be Anna's mode", basing this on untruths - a false claim that you'd only deleted a single comment, and your subsequent false assertion that the additional deleted comments had been of a particular type that you find philosophically unacceptable.
Also for falsely asserting "she never address the data I presented", in my month of commenting on your blog.

In return, I'd like to apologize for the hostile tone of my earlier comments in this thread - when I perceive sophistry I do get hot under the collar, but I should have taken more care in how I expressed it.

Gentlemen?

[Anna Haynes]

Russ responds here ("no apology necessary") on his blog.