Bishop Hill Richard B on the two-degree
Oct 29, 2014 Climate: MetOffice Climate: WG3 A reader points me to this long tweet from Richard Betts, which I missed while I was away last week. It's certainly worth of reposting:
I see the '2 degree limit' as rather like a speed limit on a road - both are set by policymakers on the basis of a number of considerations.
On the roads, the main issues are safety, fuel economy and journey time. Regarding safety, driving at 5mph under the speed limit does not automatically make the journey 'safe', and exceeding the limit by 5mph does not automatically make it 'dangerous'. Clearly, all other rings being equal, the faster one travels the greater the danger from an accident - but you also want to go fast enough to get to your destination in a reasonable time. The level of danger at any particular speed depends on many factors, such as the nature of the particular road, the condition of the car and the skill of the driver. It would be too complicated and unworkable to set individual speed limits for individual circumstances taking into account all these factors, so clear and simple general speed limits are set using judgement and experience to try to get an overall balance between advantages and disadvantages of higher speeds for the community of road users as a whole. Basically, a simple limit is practical and workable.
I see the climate policy focus on global mean temperature (eg. 2 degrees C) as playing a similar role - a simple indicator for policy purposes, and as basis for discussing pros and cons of different policy choices, but not to be taken too literally as a real threshold. Despite what we sometimes hear, there is no clear, scientifically-based threshold for 'dangerous anthropogenic climate change'. Clearly the stronger our influence on climate, the greater the risk of exposing ourselves to conditions we are not used to and hence unprepared for (eg. heavier rainfall, higher storm surges, longer or more intense heat waves). Staying below (say) 2 degrees does not mean these things won't happen, and exceeding (say) 2 degrees does not mean they'll suddenly happen all the time. Specific regional climate changes are not strongly linked to any particular level of global warming - there are many factors which affect the relationship between global mean temperature and regional climate and weather. Moreover, the level of 'danger' from such things also depends on how resilient society is - whether adequate flood provision exists, for example. There's so many complex factors that it's impossible to truly say what the 'dangerous' level of global warming is. However, a simplistic indicator based on global mean temperature does at least give some focus for discussion.
Reader Comments (110)
It seems there is a mole in the Scottish government. I found this discussion document in my word-processor a short while ago - it seems to be a decision-support document for strategic policymakers:
Alas, there was no 'enclosed attachment' in the document. Perhaps that will be leaked later. In the meantime, how come a tweet can be so long? I though they were limited to 140 characters?
"Clearly the stronger our influence on climate, the greater the risk of exposing ourselves to conditions we are not used to"
Like nice sunny days.
It was a glorious summer where I live. All caused by "climate change".
Thanks "climate change".
(I wonder why a supposed scientists never admits better weather might occur if the warming every resumed?
Allan M
I agree with you entirely about Leeming. I haven't read his book for years but two things stand out still — both (I think) relevant to this debate.
Shortly after the war local Road Safety Committees tended to be chaired by retired Lt-Colonels (or similar) and he had a stand-up fight with one who demanded a 30mph limit for his area because the guy down the road had one. He eventually got his way even though Leeming argued that the limit was unnecessary and probably counter-productive. Which it was; the accident rate went up. Colonel Blimp didn't care; he'd got his speed limit and that was that.
I'm slightly vaguer about the other episode but it involved an unusual accident pattern at what, the officials thought, was a straightforward crossroads. In order to establish the problem, the local roads staff were stopping cars that had "jumped" the junction to find out why. Fairly soon the News of the World (I think) got wind of the fact that these miscreants were not being prosecuted to the full extent of the law, with inevitable results.
Not, fortunately, before Leeming had established that the problem was a combination of topography and the positioning of road signs that led visitors (and that was a tourist area then as it is now) to misread the junction.
Whatever his views on global warming might have been I'm pretty sure he's not a man that would take "2 degrees" as gospel on anybody's say-so!
When Richard Betts first started commenting on this site I had a great deal of respect for him
You were not alone. As a scientist and engineer who worked in the public sector I had already met many people of the same ilk. Not fooled for 1ms.
(I wonder why a supposed scientists never admits better weather might occur if the warming every resumed?
Bruce
Money, Bruce, Money.
Betts' metaphor has inspired me.
Baroness Verma, expert driver of the UK energy automobile, does not know reverse from forward, nor how to steer, nor what fuel propels it.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/28/British-minister-claims-UK-government-policy-has-helped-save-the-world-from-climate-change
Just RB catching up with the times, climate scientists are distancing themselves from the 2c mantra.
Ed Hawkins did similar in his Keynote at the 2014 Sea Ice Prediction Workshop back in April.
"...endless repetition of theory dressed up as fact."
Actually, believe it or not, there isn't even a theory that links CO2-warming to extreme weather events. Lindzen tells us that it used to be textbook meteorology that it was global cooling that causes more storms; the only possible exception being in the tropics but that notion was also subsequently debunked by real science. Peter Stott also likes to repeat the mantra that wet areas will get wetter and dry areas will get drier under a warming world for which there was never any theory either, was entirely illogical as cooling must then do the opposite, and is proven false by every bit of data yet uncovered. Never mind the Met Office also likes to tell us their forecasts are up to 90% accurate. That 90% forecast is of course made 1-minute beforehand but it's repeating the sound-bite that is important to these clueless characters.
They should close down or privatise the Met Office, not give them £97million. Didn't they buy a supercomputer just about 3 years ago?
If the rent-whores making a living out of pretending to model the climate were to read James Gleick's book on Chaos, or even better Benoit Mandelbrot's book The (mis)Behaviour of Markets they would realise that the whole activity is mathematically unsound. But since so many mortgages depend on the religious belief that climate can be modelled, they won't.
The guiltiest men are the Government Chief Scientific Officers who should be in the Tower of London.
Sadly, I think most people seem to have got into the Precautionary Principle mindset. The number of times I hear people arguing for 30mph limits, or 20mph even, because there is "an accident waiting to happen" and they think drivers will slow down if the limit is there, but as someone else mentioned, people tend to drive to the speed of the road.
The two degree limit is the same accident waiting to happen argument and feeds the PP mindset.
Such distancing may well be vital for 'the cause', Green Sand (3:32 PM). Much was made of the cooling trend to fuel the cooling scare in the 1970s. Much was made of the warming trend to fuel the warming scare in the 1990s. Now we have no trend at all to speak of in global mean temperature, and that is very bad news for climate alarmists. So, I suppose everything else remotely meteorological is being explored to find new fuel. Talk of a 2C threat that looks to be hundreds of years away to naive extrapolationists, or even heading in the 'wrong' direction, is no good. No good at all. The entire climate alarm industry, of which Richard is a relatively distinguished, and decent, member is under threat. He should be OK personally, but he'll be wanting to do something to help new recruits feel they have a future.
Just to remind you all, your taxes paid for this drivel, this is allegedly a Civil Servant doing his best for his paymasters ie us. Instead we get some self serving rubbish designed to keep the money flowing his and the Met Offices way when in his heart he knows its not right. Trouble is he is not alone and the Civil Service especially DECC is infested with the same attitude.
the only possible exception being in the tropics but that notion was also subsequently debunked by real science.
Oct 29, 2014 at 3:50 PM | JamesG
===============================================
"real science" or "Real Science"?
It makes a (huge) difference.
As in
Son, help Uncle Jack off his donkey - as opposed to
Son, Help uncle jack off his donkey.
Let's see if this posts without error.
"The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks."
Aug 27, 2014 at 5:12 PM Richard Betts
==============================================
Oh and the Arctic is screaming...
@Schrodinger's Cat: "They should close down or privatise the Met Office, not give them £97million. Didn't they buy a supercomputer just about 3 years ago?"
Yes, but that was an old model, it was cheap and slow and didn't give the 'right' results. The new one's more expensive, faster, with lots more bells and whistles and will give the right results, and who cares if it costs £97 million, it's only taxpayers money; and anyway, in a few years time, when it hasn't given the right results, there will be an even more expensive and faster model that will give the right results (honest), and ,hey, it's still only taxpayers money.
That doesn't stop the Met Orifice, Jeremy. They just ask for another 100m squid to build a bigger computer so their models can get the wrong answer a bit faster.
t's as though Richard hasn't been listening to us. The numbers are crap - let's take the 2C number (there are a lot more believe me), only a prize idiot would believe that 2C is critical on the basis that 1.9C is OK and 2.1 is awful. Unfortunately the world is full of prize idiots in the political classes and the cliscis have exploited this:
Here are a few more odd numbers in no particular order:
97% of the CO2 put into the atmosphere is natural - I would have thought that anything in nature would have error bounds making that number ludicrously accurate;
3% of CO2 is put into the atmosphere by humans, calculated by assuming the total amount of fossil fuels burnt in a particular year - This is so complex that the output of such a number can be little more than a guess. For instance the fossil fuels have to be broken down by CO2 emissions content, then they have to be estimated across all fossil fuels and a number comes out from these calculations which is a guess, nothing more, a guess.
Take a look at the radiation budget diagrams, currently the imbalance is supposed to be 0.6W/m^2 from an input of 341W/m^2. Go look at the parameters needed to be understood to get to this number, All of them will vary depending upon conditions, but the clisci community have persuaded themselves that they know that there is an imbalance of 0,6W/m^2 an accuracy of 0.18% of the total radiation at the TOA. This is the missing heat they can't find, it cannot be possible, can it? that so many highly educated scientists have swallowed the idea that they can measure a system with so many known (and unknnown) variables with sufficient accuracy to predict that the heat is definitely here and it's just hiding.
There are myriads of such baffling numbers tossed around with certainty be a scientific community that frankly, needs to back to science school and get some scepticism.
Of course sceptics don't think the 2C is dangerous, not the 1.5C - 4.5C numbers for that matter, we know they're made up. Moreover we are also aware that the impacts of such a rise in temperature are also made up, or at best, guesses. The cliscis can no more foretell the future state of the climate than they could tip the winner of next year's Grand National, it's their imaginations that are giving us the impacts.
Sorry Richard.
"Didn't they buy a supercomputer just about 3 years ago"
Yeah, more like 5 years ago but it was a disposable computer at 30 million quid a bit like a laptop only not so portable and a bigger screen.
Oct 29, 2014 at 2:59 PM | John Shade
That looks like a spoof to me. "Desirable climate change?" That's heresy. Or am I missing the joke?
Oct 29, 2014 at 3:13 PM | Mike Jackson
Your recall of Leeming is pretty accurate. There is also the time when there were a series of skidding accidents on a newly surfaced bend. The police kept prosecuting drivers, saying that good drivers don't skid. This carried on until one of their own, nice shiny new patrol cars was written off on the bend. Meanwhile Leeming had worked out that the new surfacing machine had more or less polished the surface, but not in a way that any driver or even highway engineer could observe.
Remarkable fellow.
@Breath of Fresh Air: " Trouble is he is not alone and the Civil Service especially DECC is infested with the same attitude."
The words 'Misconduct in Public Office' come to mind. But, then again the Met Office and its employees are probably only doing what they've been told to do. And, anyway, the only people who could do anything about it are; a) the Police, and they wont, because they are Public Servants, so the Civil Servants wont let them; b) the CPS , and they wont, because they are Civil Servants too; or, c) the Politicians, and they wont because they probably told them to do it in the first place.
Question what is the Carbon Footprint of the BBC
What is the annual power consumption of BritishTelevision Broadcasting generally.
In a new Era of Electrocity Rasioning can the BBC really afford an old tired late night ratings losing Current affairs show without its old legendary front man Jeremy Paxman whose defected to Sky.
Even Russel Brand can't save Newsnight.
Perhaps Ian Katz really is starting to get the message
The problem with Richard Betts comparing roadway speed limits to a '2 degree limit' is that roadway speed limits are based on tangible facts & historic data and the '2 degree limit' was arbitrarily pulled out of the climate committee's backside. I see the '2 degree limit' as rather like requiring drivers to at each sighting of a Volkswagen Beetle, pull over to the side of the road, hop-skip around their vehicle three times while screaming "the sky is falling, the sky is falling", then reach into their pocket, pull out a tenner and toss it into the wind.
John Shade
Now that really is frightening! Climate change has stopped temperatures rising or falling! Quick hit the panic button! It must be the fault of us humans who live outside of and apart from nature. Suspect we will get a ticket for dawdling on the motorway.
As to Richard Betts' tweet, should have limited himself to 140 characters.
It is actually not the case that faster=more dangerous.
There is the issue of lower speed limits on highways will push people into taking different, slower roads, where the likelihood for accidents is actually higher when you consider the distance and number of cars driven.
Also, a large differential in speeds between lanes is a risk as well.
Continuing with Bett's speed limit analogy, the current green idiocy is to energy policy as the red flag laws were to road safety:
All those 'green jobs'!
What a pile of meaningless drivel.
14 characters would have done it - "I know nothing"
preferably followed by - "so I'll STFU!!"
Pathetic what these shysters have the neck to spout as they try and position their message in the public mindset on the run up to the Paris COP.
And re speed limits, RB knows less than nothing:
http://www.roadsafetyobservatory.com/Review/10041
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Motorways
Now, Mr Planner, please tell us why we need to spend £100,000 to upgrade this accident black spot.
Erm..
Hold on, when there hasn't been a accident on for 18 years.
You can never be told be too careful, sir. Our traffic models are predicting a mass pile up right here within 2 years. There are babies involved.
Can a dead parrot do a long tweet?
Can a dead parrot do a long tweet?
RB reminds me of a parish where I lived as a youth and a long-departed vicar, famous for his 'lovely, friendly Family Service' sermons which attracted extraordinarily large congregations. I discovered eventually, as did most of my peers, that the 'lovely sermons', so admired by our collective Mums, were merely a successful sales pitch for his unremarkable and untestable religion.
TWEET + CO2 = TWEET FARTS
http://www.tweetfarts.com/
As others above have indicated, he's gently extricating the Warmists from the many failed goalpost predictions, while at the same time "reserving the privilege" of the Warmist Elites to evoke "AGW" selectively - on a case-by-case basis - to influence policy, and keep the cash machine running.
According to the DVLA info, a car hitting a me at 30 mph, is comparatively less likely to kill me, at 40mph death is almost guaranteed and at 20mph around some school areas the incidence of mortal accident would be logically further decreased - though I know not the statistics of this - perhaps RB can help?
Mr. Betts waxing lyrical about metaphors and all, will wonders never cease? Though I deem that, the prose is rather mechanical.
Oh dear me, I should have resisted but temptation always burdens heavy on my shoulder, and impishly incarnate at that.
I need a second opinion, maybe from Jeremy Clarkson.
I'm willing to bet that, whatever happens to CO2, the 2°C figure will never be reached until after the next glacial.
My bet is no more irrational than Betts' tweet.
Oct 29, 2014 at 1:24 PM | thinkingscientist
Last year, I bought Risk and Freedom directly from John
Oct 29, 2014 at 12:02 PM | Allan M
Thanks, I will be tracking down "Road Accidents: prevent or punish" by JJ Leeming
"So Richard Betts uses 421 words to tell his twits that he believes in the 'Precautionary Principle'." --Harry Passfield
Yes, and 200 of those words are a false analogy. Betts had failed to live up to my rather mediocre expectations.
Humanity seems to be pretty well scattered all over the Earth in almost every conceivable climatic zone, so what is it that we cannot adapt to, other than cold?
Oct 30, 2014 at 5:45 AM | Streetcred
Not to mention the very rapid 'climate' change throughout every year. As you say we seem to prefer to inhabit the sahara or the steaming tropics than we do the Arcti circle or Antarctica. Nature in general doesn't seem to have a problem with the higher temperatures.
I am willing to concede that higher temperatures will add a bit to sea level. Even then humankind seems to have flourished with the 130m increase I think since coming out of the last glacial period.
I've made the same comment about sea level. The daily tidal range in most places is several orders of magnitude greater than the projected sea level rise (based on current trend) for this century.
The only way Dr. Betts' tweet makes sense is if it is seen through the eyes of faith in a cliamte catastrophe.
Like the anonymous leak from the Scottish source posted by John Shade @ Oct 29, 2014 at 2:59 PM | Registered CommenterJohn Shade, Betts' statement is, objectively speaking, gobbledy gook.
At least the speed limits set in the US have a modicum of data behind them. IMO set too low at 55 for political reasons and now being raised to 70. So where is the data, not computer models, that 2 degrees has any relation to reality.
Speed limits would be unnecessary if the driver's air bag were replaced by a spike.. :-)
Betts then says that the "considerations" that policymakers take into account in order to set the law are:
safety
fuel economy
journey time
Careful GEKKO
Back in the '70s, before your driving days perhaps, the governments of europe were forced to reduce all the max speed limits (not the 30mph) down to 50mph (fuel economy) to save oil because of another mid east crisis.
"Or even every day sometimes!" of course Mike. So if we were start burning up in the UK it looks like we can get nearly 10 degrees of mitigation(min/max difference) in the summer by switching our working lives from day -> night
For entertainment purposes only, I suggest they express the 2C speed limit as 3.6F.
Dr. Betts' conclusion, that 2oC is workable is proven by reality to be anything but.
Betts is gently backing away, because the arguments that he and his pals have been pushing for the last decade or so are just plain wrong.
The "speed limits" analogy is a complete crock, as others on this thread have ably demonstrated. And, thanks to those who mentioned a couple of books on the subject, which I will be chasing up. :)
To compare climate "science" with road engineering, which the Romans were pretty good at 2000 years ago, and we are (at least theoretically) even better at, is ludicrous.
Before the Romans were even thought of, the Greeks had a word for it.
Hubris.
geronimo
It's as though Richard hasn't been listening to us.
Why on earth would he be listening to us low life? He only needs taxpayer's money not your ears (although that may come later and then your gonads)