Walking Back Climate ‘Science’ & Policy (updated 22sep14)

Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.  Luke 23:34

George Rebane

On the front of the 20sep14 edition of WSJ is a top-of-the-page herald that reads ‘Climate Science is NOT Settled’ (emphasis theirs; source of filched photo).  I have waited at least ten years for the world’s preeminent newspaper to publish a major essay, so titled and no less by a scientist acknowledged by both true believers and skeptics.  The piece is written by Dr Steven E Koonin, now director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, and formerly undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during Obama’s first term.  Other positions included professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech.  Let me be up front, this is an ‘I told you so all along’ posting in which I will engage in some well-deserved braggadocio here and again.

Koonin’s piece is somewhat awkward in its attempt to walk back the bamboozle from the 'science' and baseless public policies we have been subjected to for the last 20+ years.  However, it is rich in corroborating the exact laundry list of criticisms that we science-savvy climate skeptics have been alerting our readers to for at least a decade.  While the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation and RR have a long string of published critiques of what has passed for climate science from government grant-sucking academics and in the lamestream media, the heavy lifting in informing the public has been done by people like Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, and even our own Russ Steele.

Awkward or not, Dr Koonin has the courage to finally break the silence with which Teams Obama, Gore, Schwarzenegger, and now Moonbeam have greeted every substantive counter to the arguments claimed to have been made in the various reports released over the years by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Before going into some detail, let me give the overview that Koonin’s arguments follow exactly the (Venn) diagrammatic structure of the same arguments I gave in my 2008 paper ‘Climate Change – A Format for Reasoned Dialogue’ available here.

The tagline to Koonin’s piece is “Climate change is real and affected by human activity, writes a former top science official of the Obama administration.  But we are very far from having the knowledge needed to make good policy.” (emphasis mine)  Koonin opens up with –

The idea that "Climate science is settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.

No one claims that human activity does not affect weather and climate, but it is the impact of human activity that has been greatly distorted.  Specifically, “the impact today of human activity appears comparable to the intrinsic natural variability of the climate system itself.”  Let me translate this for the non-technical reader – we cannot separate out human contribution to climate change within the natural changes that would occur without human intervention.  Therefore claims that humans have caused this temperature change, or sea level rise, or severity of storms, or polar ice cap changes is specious, ignorant, and cynical.   Our science is not advanced enough to inform us; we simply don’t know.

Then Koonin correctly identifies the question “hardest to answer” – ‘How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?’  This is the preamble to a discussion of computer climate models and their manifest shortcomings.  All covered in more detail here (see my above paper) and elsewhere (see also 2007 paper by McKitrick and Michaels) by those of us who have made careers in computer modeling of complex realworld processes – a skill in obvious short supply among the vociferous IPCC ‘climate scientists’.

Again, for the non-technical reader, we don’t understand the fundamental (and multifarious) climate processes well enough to model them independently, let alone how they would perform when integrated with other process models about which we are equally ignorant.  All the current models are cobbled together using inter-process links and feedbacks defined in essence by ‘brown numbers’  (originating from where the sun don’t shine).  These brown numbers are dredged out from attempts to fit the models to historical data on such atmospheric variables as CO2 concentration, temperature, …, which data records themselves are highly unreliable.  And using such brown numbers, the agenda driven ‘scientists’ then run the models forward in timeframes that range from fifty to a hundred years.  Reading the resulting smelly model outputs, they strap on a straight face and report to the know-nothing politicians that the world will come to an end if we don’t stop doing this, that, and the other thing RIGHT NOW!!  And across the world the even more science-deprived (read dumber) public figures start echoing and amplifying the dire warnings like a legion of bobbing heads on a dash panel.

What has been most reprehensible by the know-nothings like Obama and Gore is that they claim to derive truth from a ‘scientific consensus’ on climate change.  The real truth of the matter is that there has never been any scientific consensus on the interpretation of the climate records, the understanding of climate processes, the composition and operation of large computer models, and the results that these have spit out.  Any claims to the contrary by those sporting technical degrees is out and out fraud (not Koonin's words, he wouldn’t dare), or ignorance of the magnitude that demands such degree holders sue for tuition refunds because their schools didn’t teach them anything.

And lest you think that the above paragraph concluded in hyperbole, consider that climate predicting has openly declared itself not ready for prime time, let alone as forming basis for public policy.  This is the ‘smoking gun’ - it is the only area of science that many of us are aware wherein the uncertainty bounds on its predictions have not decreased over time, as the accepted primary indicator that we understand more today than we did yesterday (more here).  The IPCC’s duufus brigade has just looked at such damning results, but haven’t had a clue about what to make of it as they continue to ensure one and all that the sky is falling.

Here’s the bottom line after Koonin brings us through the travails and foibles of climate modeling –

These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not "minor" issues to be "cleaned up" by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research. … Yet a public official reading only the IPCC's "Summary for Policy Makers" would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that "climate science is settled."

If we ever walk back the bad science that has so polluted the issues of climate change and manmade global warming, then we can have a reasoned public debate about what prudent actions would serve in our current state of knowledge or ignorance.  Most would agree with Koonin’s conclusion that –

Individuals and countries can legitimately disagree about these matters, so the discussion should not be about "believing" or "denying" the science. Despite the statements of numerous scientific societies, the scientific community cannot claim any special expertise in addressing issues related to humanity's deepest goals and values. The political and diplomatic spheres are best suited to debating and resolving such questions, and misrepresenting the current state of climate science does nothing to advance that effort. … Any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future. Recognizing those limits, rather than ignoring them, will lead to a more sober and ultimately more productive discussion of climate change and climate policies.

Finally, I would like to remind RR readers of the damage to public goodwill and harmony that local promoters of big government have done in this arena.  In our community the growing progressive influx has brought with it all the slogans and mantras decrying how man is ‘destroying earth’s climate’ and demanding draconian policies that impose green collectivism (as embodied in Agenda21) as our only path to salvation.  These locals embody the worst of what self-declared elites can foist upon the intellectually defenseless.  In recent years they have caused untold damage to California’s economy and quality of life by promoting such laws as AB32 (‘Global Warming Solutions Act’) along with platoons of EPA regulations covering everything from water usage to cow farts that most egregiously affect rural and less developed parts of the state.  These self-styled promoters of the environment are themselves profoundly ignorant, and to the extent that they are aware of their dumbth and continue their activism, they are also consummately cynical knowing how they impact our lives on the local level.  So far we have only responded to them most generously with various elaborations of the prayer, ‘Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.'

(An example of the kool-aid continuously consumed by local lefties is that on ncvoices.us, an otherwise useful source for local blogs and information sites, RR is listed off-screen on right edge with a group of mostly conservative websites under the heading ‘Denialism/Climate Contrarians’.   Such an appellation and the editorial copy that follows are more than sufficient to inform the reader about the science credentials of that site’s author.)

[22sep14 update]  The propaganda engines are humming this morning reporting yesterday’s People’s Climate March and the upcoming UN’s pre-conference on climate.  I find it interesting how brazenly the Left is taking the last vestiges of science out of global warming which is now 1) axiomatically accepted as being man-made AND man-correctible (AGW), and 2) that its real purpose is to unite people worldwide to destroy capitalism and put in a new social and economic order.

A notable example of this kind of reportage was very evident on today’s National Propaganda Radio’s Morning Edition.  It reported on the big march in NYC and the UN conference.  Cited was the large ideological divide in who believes in AGW – Democrats overwhelmingly, Republicans sparingly.  AGW was posited multiple times in its ‘debate is over’ and ‘science is settled’ versions.  And the report ended with a Democratic strategist outlining how blacks and Hispanics, who don’t usually vote, will be motivated to do so by bringing AGW to them in readily understandable “kitchen table talk” formats in which they are told that all inclement weather events are due to and direct evidence of AGW.  To bring us back from the brink and have good weather again, they need to think socialism and vote Democratic.  (See also the many informative and corroborative comments attending this post, and this on Russ Steele’s Sierra Foothill Commentary.)

Comments

[Russ Steele]

Gregory at 8:58PM

Great find. Looking forward to the American Physical Society press release.

[Gregory]

I wonder why the APS hired someone like Dr. Koonin to chair their AGW review instead of some of those scientists the idiot descendants of ol man Rockefeller are hiring?

JoKe, where are you?

[George Rebane]

Here's an interesting summary of the Rockerfellers' alleged decision to get out of fossil fuel investments that so exercised JoeK (1011am) whose comment drew a chorus of contending responses. It seems to confirm that the froth from the Left was again misplaced when promoting the wisdom of going green.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-rockefellers-reject-oil-1412980960