The IPCC and Restaurant Bills

There has been some talk lately about an IPCC “mistake” in apparently predicting the melting of Himalayan glaciers by 2035.  Unsurprisingly, the alarmists excuse this, stating that “[l]ike all human endeavours, the IPCC is not perfect.”  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/the-ipcc-is-not-infallible-shock/

However, I am reminded of mistakes I find in restaurant and other bills.  Why is it that 90% of these mistakes are in favor of the restaurant and against me? 

Is it a coincidence that this IPCC “mistake” just happened to support the alarmist viewpoint?

I don’t think so.  Even among those alarmists who are not intentionally engaging in fraud, it’s human nature to be much more careful in evaluating claims which go against their agenda than in evaluating claims which support it.  In the same way, many restaurants are much more careful to make sure everything you ordered goes on the bill than to make sure you don’t get billed for stuff you didn’t order.

The IPCC is pretty clearly biased in favor of the alarmist point of view which is good reason to be skeptical of the IPCC’s claims.  And yet in debates about global warming, alarmists consistently rely on the latest IPCC report as though its the bible of their Green Religion.

More on Global Cooling

A friend e-mailed me an article stating that “Statisticians Reject Global Cooling.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33482750/ns/us_news-environment?wid=18298287

Here was my response:

As far as global warming goes, any way you slice it, global surface temperatures since 1998 have still not exceeded the high reached in 1998.  Basically the article seems to be saying that this could easily be the result of chance, i.e. natural fluctuations in the temperature.  Which is true, except that I don’t think enough is known about the natural causes of temperature variations to say anything meaningful one way or another.
 
To me, asking whether cooling since 1998 is statistically significant is the wrong question.  Instead, one needs to ask what, if anything, the warmists predicted and whether that prediction came true.
 
One can ask hypothetically what would have happened if we had set a new temperature record in 2008.  You can bet that the warmists would have been screaming about it from the rooftops and presenting it as strong evidence in favor of their hypothesis.  Which leads me to ask:  What would need to have happened to undermine or falsify the warmist position? 
 
The way science normally works is that you test a hypothesis by making a prediction and seeing if reality matches that prediction.  If so, it’s evidence that your hypothesis is correct.  If not, it’s evidence that your hypothesis is wrong.  But global warming science doesn’t seem to work this way.  Any time a warming event happens, such as a hot year or a melting glacier, it’s presented as evidence in favor of the warmist hypothesis.  If a warming event does not happen (or a cooling event happens), it is explained away as natural variation.
 
As far as I know, the warmists’ computer models predicted fairly stead warming, year after year, with an average of 2 to 3 years between each new temperature record.  So 11 years without a temperature record is a big problem for them, in my opinion.  Even if it’s the result of “natural variation,” it shows that there is some unknown factor which is important and which is not properly accounted for in the models.

Science Is Hard

One thing I have noticed over the years is that it’s usually possible to briefly summarize the best evidence for a scientific claim.  For example, what’s the best evidence that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer?  The fact that epidemological studies show that cigarette smokers have a significantly greater chance of dying from lung cancer.

What about with global warming?  I asked that question in a debate recently, and the answer I got, in essence, is this:

“Science is hard.  Climatology is especially hard.  That’s why we need to have scientific experts look at all the evidence in its totality and interpret it for us.”

To me, this raises a red flag.  Yes, it’s logically possible that there is a compelling case for CAGW which is too complicated to summarize in a few sentences and too difficult for the layman to understand.  But I doubt it.  The best evidence for Einstein’s theory of relativity can be summed up in just a few sentences.  Is climatology really that much harder than theoretical physics?

On the other hand, take a look at pseudoscientific nonsense like  ghosts, yogic levitation, and free energy machines.  There is lots of weak evidence for these phenomena, and yet none of it stands up to scrutiny.  The folks peddling these ideas are unable to summarize their case in a simple way and I have little doubt that if pressed, they would claim it’s the fault of laypeople that they cannot understand the science.

In other words, CAGW is more like pseudoscience than real science.  Which supports my claim that CAGW is a hoax.

It’s Even Worse Than We Expected

It seems like everywhere I turn, I see the alarmists making claims along these lines.  Given that global surface temperatures have been trending downwards for the last 10 years, one wonders what exactly they were expecting. 

Seems to me this is pretty clearly a ploy designed to create a sense of panic.  Why would the alarmists want to create panic?  Well, besides the usual reasons of getting attention, funding, and prestige, it seems to me they are faced with a problem which is that evidence is starting to mount that their predictions were wrong.

If temperatures continue to trend downwards, then eventually the alarmists will become laughingstocks.

But if the alarmists can create enough panic to get some kind of carbon-limiting treaty passed, then they can claim credit if temperatures continue to trend downwards.  So they will at least have a little fig leaf.

Another Red Flag: Predictions Which are Conveniently Difficult to Falsify

Here is a graph which purports to show model predictions for arctic sea ice:

http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2009/stroeve.png

What’s interesting to me about the graph is how convenient it is for climate modelers.  According to the graph, the really dramatic changes will not start taking place for another 20 years or so.  In the short term, i.e. the next 10 or 20 years, it doesn’t matter whether artic sea ice increases modestly, decreases modestly, or stays the same.  In all of these cases, the climate modelers can say that reality is consistent with their models. 

In 10 or 20 years, if and when their predictions don’t pan out, they can claim that their models have improved a lot since then.

This is a red flag that the models are bogus.

Another Simple Question: What Caused the Little Ice Age?

By way of background, the “Little Ice Age” was a period a few hundred years ago when global surface temperatures were lower than they were before or afterwards.    You can read more about it here:

http://www.grisda.org/origins/10051.htm

On more than one occasion, I have asked warmists “what, in your view, caused the Little Ice Age?” I have never gotten a straight answer to that question.

For me, the question is very easy to answer. (drumroll  . . . . )  I don’t know what caused the Little Ice Age. 

Why is it that warmists are afraid to admit they don’t know what caused the little ice age?  Well, their predictions of catastrophic warming are based on computer simulations.  Those simulations are based in large part on what the simulators understand (or hope they understand) about the various forces which affect the climate. 

So if simulators do not understand what caused the Little Ice Age, it follows that there is likely to be some important force which is either omitted or not accurately represented in their climate simulations.  Obviously this calls into question the results of these simulations. 

Moreover, if we don’t know what caused the Little Ice Age, we cannot rule out the possibility that the same factor (or some change in that factor) is what caused the Earth to warm in the late 20th century. 

So that’s why warmists cannot admit ignorance about the Little Ice Age.  To do so would be to admit substantial uncertainty about their core claims.

Simple Questions; Red Flags

Further to my post about “red flags,” http://brazil84.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/reason-1-cagw-has-the-red-flags-of-a-hoax/  , it occurs to me that there is another indication that CAGW is a hoax.

Specifically, in my experience, the warmists frequently evade or refuse to answer simple questions about their position.  When an advocate refuses to answer simple, fair, tough questions, it’s often because the question exposes some serious flaw in his position which he is trying to obscure from others and even from himself.

For example, I recently asked a warmist blogger a simple yes or no question:

“Was there global warming between 1988 and 1998?  (simple yes or no question).”

The bogger evaded the question and in fact deleted the parenthetical.  Why would anyone evade a simple question like this? 

The reason is that this blogger was on the horns of a dilemma.  He had already claimed that global cooling between 1998 and 2009 was a “myth” in part because the time period involved is only 10 or 11 years.  By the same logic,  it follows that global warming between 1988 and 1998 is a “myth.”  Which is is ridiculous on its face.

Personally, I am not afraid to answer simple questions about my position.  Why should I be?  If it demonstrates a problem with my position, it gives me the chance to discover I am wrong about something and learn more. 

But warmists are in a different boat.  They are invested in their hypothesis — emotionally, financially, or both.  They are afraid of falling into a trap which will expose a weakness in their position.  So they must evade questions.

Warmist Bait and Switch

I had thought I was going to use this blog to just to lay out my position on the global warming controversy and not to make additional posts as with a normal blog.  However in recent weeks I have felt a little frustrated by the fact that I have attempted to make reasonable points on pro-CAGW blogs but the people running those blogs have failed to publish my comments.  So I have decided to start posting thoughts here.

This post arises from an exchange I had with a warmist blogger.  This blogger essentially claimed that “global cooling since 1998″ was a “myth.”

To me, stating that a claim is a “myth” means you are saying, in essence, that there is essentially no factual basis for the claim.  Is that the case with “global cooling since 1998″?  It does not seem so:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2009

According to the “HadCRUT” data series (which I understand to be one of the leading temperature data series), it does appear that global surface temperatures are generally trending downwards between 1998 and the present.  I pointed this out to the blogger, who responded as follows:

[If you pick a different start year and/or a different temperature series, you might have a different impression. For instance try Gistemp from 1999.

Of course 10 years is way too short to draw any conclusions, especially when a record year is cherrypicked as the starting point. A more compelling analysis would note that long term linear trend are as high or higher compared to the period ending in 1998, or that the 2000s are significantly warmer than the 1990s, on average. In all data sets, including HadCRU.]

It seems to me that this blogger is engaging in bait and switch tactics.  The claim was that global cooling since 1998 is a “myth.”  But this is not the claim that this blogger is defending.  Instead, he is arguing that by some other measures, global surface temperatures have not been trending downwards.  And that any cooling does not invalidate his basic position.

I am happy to discuss these other issues, but first let’s face facts:  Global cooling since 1998 is not a myth.

I debate with warmists a lot, and these sorts of bait and switch tactics are pretty common.

Update:  I edited this post to take out the name of the blog in question.

7.0 Conclusion?

The foregoing posts summarize why I believe that the CAGW Hypothesis is wrong.  However, I am willing to consider in good faith arguments, evidence, or ideas I may have missed.  Please feel free to share them, keeping in mind the Rules I laid out in Section 1.  Thank you.

6.0(c) Authority

The last argument I see commonly made in support of CAGW is the argument that some authority has accepted the CAGW hypothesis.

However, on closer inspection, it seems that most of these statements contain equivocal language and/or employ the same bait and switch mentioned in Rule 1.1 below.  For example, according to Wikipedia, here’s what the American Meteorological Society said:

There is now clear evidence that the mean annual temperature at the Earth’s surface, averaged over the entire globe, has been increasing in the past 200 years. There is also clear evidence that the abundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased over the same period. In the past decade, significant progress has been made toward a better understanding of the climate system and toward improved projections of long-term climate change… Human activities have become a major source of environmental change. Of great urgency are the climate consequences of the increasing atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases… Because greenhouse gases continue to increase, we are, in effect, conducting a global climate experiment, neither planned nor controlled, the results of which may present unprecedented challenges to our wisdom and foresight as well as have significant impacts on our natural and societal systems

Sorry, but that is NOT an acceptance of CAGW.  Read it carefully, and here’s the test:  Assume for the moment that CAGW is incorrect.  Does it necessarily follow that the statement was wrong?  No!.

In any event, situations can and do arise where the “experts” are wrong.  So even if lots of experts unequivocally endorsed the CAGW hypothesis, it would be interesting, but not necessarily determinative of anything. 

Finally, it’s worth noting that the statements and actions of an organization do not necessarily represent the views of the organization’s membership.  Situations can and do arise where a representative group or committee decides issues differently than would be decided by the people it represents.  For example, one might ask why Switzerland did not join the European Union.  It seems that unlike other European nations, the issue of Swiss membership in the European Union was put to a vote of individual citizens.  As opposed to a vote of the Swiss legislature.  The kind of person who goes through the trouble of ending up on a legislature or executive committee is not your average person.

_____________

Objections / FAQ

6.1 How dare you — a non-scientist — challenge the authority of actual scientists?

Very easily.  For one thing, it’s a lot easier to have the knowledege and thinking ability to see serious problems with a hypothesis than to be reasonably satisfied that the hypothesis is correct.  The former requires you to break only one link in the chain.

Indeed, I suspect that a lot of these climate scientists probably have backgrounds in statistics and modeling which are not too different from mine.  (I took numerous advanced classes in statistics and modeling as an undergraduate.)

In any event, you (the person reading this and objecting) are probably not a scientist either.  Do you feel you are qualified to go against such scientists as Richard Lindzen and Bob Carter? 

Ultimately, anybody’s arguments must stand or fall on their own merits  – regardless of the person’s credentials.  But in any event, if you believe (as a non-scientist) that non-scientists are not qualified to evaluate the CAGW hypothesis, then there is no need for you to debate the issue with me.