Discussion > Why Do Climate Scientists Believe That There's a Debate To Be Had
it has irritated me as well..
they seem to imply that the sceptics are moving to their position..
but ALL along most sceptics have said how much, and it's the dumb policies we care about..
Has the GWPF changed it's thinking, I don't think so, the climate scientists finally just 'noticed', and are spinning it.
Barry Woods
The consensus supporters have always talked about their own construct of a sceptic, not actual sceptics. I'd say the actual value for the effect of CO2 is still only a theory and more years of data are needed to untangle it. There has been a lot going on recently that could influence climate. I say that without assuming that the sensitivity value is low. I put little value on paleo values because there are so many opportunities for mistakes.
The key difference between us is sceptics want decisions made with the full knowledge of all the uncertainties and flaws and people like Betts and Hawkins want to pretend that consensus dilutes the need to fully consider those issues. There's too much 'expert opinion' added to the facts and dressed up as observation rather than guesswork. The pronouncements of politicians are evidence that they are either being misled or at the least, allowed to mislead themselves. I don't see that the expert opinion amounts to much more than gut feeling and personal fears.
TinyCO2
This was the point I was making on Thursday:
TBYJ: Sorry if you don't agree with my point that mainstream scepticism has been far more intelligent than its critics every single year since 1988 and if you don't want to defend your earlier assessment. But no worries. See you around.
I thought it was very ill-advised for the person in question to say this to Monty, self-styled 'climate scientist, like Richard Betts':
Monty, there is some truth in that, I don't believe there's any mileage in denying it. When I first became interested in scepticism years ago, many (perhaps most?) vocal 'skeptics' were outright denying everything, denying there is a temperature rise, denying CO2 emissions, denying it was anthro, etc etc. It was not a position I shared, and I hope I've done my bit here by convincing a few people that the earlier extreme positions are not scientifically tenable.
A chronic rewriting of history, if you look at the stubborn and brilliant work of Lindzen since 1988 and many others. As TinyCO2 says "The consensus supporters have always talked about their own construct of a sceptic, not actual sceptics." Let's not aid and abet them in doing so.
Richard Drake
I have to say I agree with Richard there to some extent.
I had similar thoughts when reading that thread and was even considering voicing them.
It reminded me a little of the Life of Brian... "Terrific race the Romans"...
What the **** has all this go to do with science?
It is the emperors new clothes and all of sudden some are beginning to see a nice set of underwear where before it was nakedness?
Do not let them get you thinking like that. That is what they want. Clarity of thougt and position (political position, not scientific) is an important framework to always work against.
I do not have to doff my cap to Monty or Richard Betts because they are scientists. Even ignoring the fact you can make a fine career and living out of trying to model a chaotic system, and everyone thinks you add value (great work when you can get it, well done Mopnty and Richard), science is just a tool, political light does not add true scienticifc mass.
There will never be a victory against indviduals. Just like post 1989 Hungary you could never find a good communist, poofff gone, overnight. Magic.
Scientists are players, this is has nothing to do with science. The emperor has no clothes, and in 20-30 years miraculously everyone will share that opinion.
Keep your positions and do not tug a forelock because people wave a PhD in front of you.
Jiminy Cricket
Barry Woods @ Mar 7, 2014 at 2:38 PM
Jiminy Cricket @ Mar 8, 2014 at 7:10 AM
That's something I can agree with. They are men and women not supermen and wonder women, when found out men and women pretend that they were right all along whilst quietly moving to a new position and that everyone else was wrong and have been convinced of the correct thing. I like the Hungary 1989 analogy.
I have been sceptical of impending disaster for getting on for 20 years, I see no reason to change yet.
SandyS
Geronimo
One of the most effective ways of killing off things like Lewis & Crok is to take them to your heart, wrap yourself lovingly round them, tell everyone they are really saying what you said all along, then re-package them and re-distribute them with your own spin attached.
That looks to me to be precisely what is happening at the moment.
All Lewis & Crok have done is to point out those bits of AR5 regarding the likely effects of CO2 that the IPCC — or to be more precise the activists that write the SPM — would rather did not see the light of day quite so explicitly.
Both Betts and Hawkins are saying, in effect, "ignore the man behind the curtain and concentrate on the action we need to take now" (implying but not saying) that some action is essential even though we are still nowhere near understanding what, if any adverse effects will flow from a 2° rise in temperature or indeed whether a 2° rise is likely or even possible — outwith their X-Box™ virtual world, that is.
No question of course that "no action" might at this stage be the action that is needed!
Mike Jackson
Mike: Agree exactly on how Lewis & Crok is being spun. I have suspicious moments these days and when I see a nym that has recently abused me playing exactly into those spinning hands - just ten hours from Richard Betts kicking off on a really critical thread and Geronimo at once objecting to the false history implied, quite rightly - I smell multiple rats. (Who is Monty anyway? Does anyone recognise that nym from before? If I'm right it's a new coinage we have the conversation quickly coming to be dominated by two dodgy actors, in my particular book.)
But whatever my suspicions I attempt to play the ball, not the man (woman or child), and that has to mean going back to a fairer view of history:
Your history is woefully inadequate in its focus on "the last five years," mostly citing people on and around the Internet. Richard Lindzen was making highly intelligent criticisms of Hansen and Gore's claimed consensus in 1988, before Tim Berners-Lee even invented the Web. That was where mainstream scepticism was then and where it's been ever since. A few pseudonymous outliers in cyberspace in the last few years mean nothing at all. You should know better.
Not a perfect contribution, even by my own lights, but is "Drake's here, time to bail" really adequate as a response? No objections are raised when I am singled out in this way. But beware becoming victims of demonisation in any direction. The very thing we were discussing in Denying the science. There's no "Drake's here, I can bail" get-out-of-jail card in the statutes of this site. This deserved an answer.
Richard Drake
I see now why I didn't understand their triumphalism. TinyCO2 explained to me that they think the sceptics have moved towards their position by admitting to warming. Their naivete, along with their ignorance of the sceptical position, is breathtaking. They don't seriously believe that the sceptical position has been that there's no warming do they? Apparently so. Now they believe that one paper, not even peer reviewed, accepts that there is warming will lead to some sort of compromise solution we can all agree on. It's small wonder I couldn't understand their triumphalism.
Just to make my perspective clear Lewis and Crok is a report, not a peer reviewed paper, but even if it was there is no sense whatsoever instantly accepting the results in the report. Nor indeed turning the pom-pom guns on it trying to bring it down. In real science it would be dissected and digested and hopefully improved on over time. It isn't scientific to jump to conclusions based on one paper ( as John Houghton and the IPCC should have realised for IPCC TAR).
Just as some background I spent a long time in my career deciding where research money should be spent. I dealt with Professors and PhDs on a day to day basis and have no illusions whatsoever that a PhD or any other academic qualification, tells you more about that person than they have an academic qualification. Educated people are no more immune from stupidity than the rest of the population. Academics are more dangerous because outsiders tend to see them as unworldly, and likely to wear odd socks, where in reality they've the same profile of stupid, conniving bastard as the rest of us.
Now we can all agree on that.
Thanks for your help everyone. I get it now.
geronimo
geronimo: Also agreed that Lewis and Crok must have normal, decent, long-term scrutiny. You were right to detect a very rapid spin operation in response to it in the early hours of Thursday and that is surely because so much money and political prestige is by now invested in this area. Politicised science. That's always worked out well.
Richard Drake
Geronimo,
Naivete is a very large part of the explanation, and much of the rest is ignorance.
As I said elsewhere I have been amused by the apparently sudden discovery by climate scientists that many famous sceptics are actually lukewarmers. But this whole kerfuffle has been a valuable reminder of how little understanding of climate scepticism there is among climate scientists, even those like Richard and Tamsin who are (in)famous for their close relationships with sceptics.
We tend to assume that climate scientists know the same things we do, but see them differently; the reality is that they just don't know about many of the things we take for granted. And even when they have some superficial knowledge they have never really internalised it in the way we have. And so they don't have the same visceral reaction to Mann, to Lewandowsky, or to Sceptical Science as we do.
Richard Drake,
Sure there is spinning of Lewis and Crok going on, but I'm less convinced that this spin is part of some massive well organised campaign. Naivete and ignorance is a much simpler explanation.
Jonathan Jones
Sorry, I should have mentioned what I put on the Josh thread. Climate sensitivity is a hypothesis based on, in my amateur view , unjustified assumptions on how a chaotic system would respond to an increase in temperature. It is perfectly acceptable to expect more water vapour in a warming world, but I have a large gap in my knowledge in which I can't understand how the climate system knows the warming has been caused by CO2 and reacts accordingly raising the temperature to 3C for a 1C increase caused by a doubling of CO2. I'm left with the sort of question I used to ask the Professors and PhDs when deciding whether to put money into their research. How would the climate system know this warmth was caused by CO2? I don't see how it could. And if it can't why didn't we see runaway 3C increases in temperature after the Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods when temperatures rose by 1C or more?
Thanks again everyone.
The bottom line for this sceptic at least is that CS isn't obvious, so Lewis and Crok's paper deserves investigation because it might move us beyond my sceptical view that it's a handy mechanism for making something pretty harmless, a global 1C temperature increase, into something really dangerous, a 3C increase in global temperature.
If you're reading Richard and Ed, the next problem I have is that 1C, or 3C, the "disasters" are the output of climate models built by people who, a priori, think there'll be disasters. I can tell you from a lifetime of work experience, that is not good, and should lead anyone with any common sense to take these projections with a pinch of salt.
Finally, while we're dealing with "smelly fish" in the science, why is it there is absolutely no upside whatsoever coming out of the climate models for an increase in global temperatures? I've just spent 7 weeks in Thailand (and am now freezing my cojones off in Boston Ma.) and can tell you from observational experience that warm is better than cold.
"Ha!" I hear you saying, "You can't project personal experience onto the global stage."
Of course, your common sense tells you that, and you're right, while my common sense tells me that science that supports a belief system and the political actions emanating from it, is smelly, at best.
geronimo
Thank you for that quote from Richard Betts, Richard Drake (5:30 AM). The essence for me is this assertion:
years ago, many (perhaps most?) vocal 'skeptics' were outright denying everything, denying there is a temperature rise, denying CO2 emissions, denying it was anthro, etc etc.
Words like caricature, parody, travesty, agitprop, and delusion come to mind. His portrayal of the people climate alarm campaigners chose to call 'sceptics' (with some subsequent regret since they came to realise that it was a compliment in some respects) is so far from my observations and experience that I gasp at the gap.
I tentatively conclude that RB and others with such a view have been living in a bubble, partly computer-generated to give the virtual world of GCMs a vivid credibility that leaves the outside observed with a dropped-jaw, partly politically-driven given the huge sums of money and floods of propaganda promoting the cause of climate alarm and denigrating, sometimes in a vile way, those who dare to be unimpressed by it.
If his eyes are opening a little, albeit still in a self-serving sort of way with his projective statement the earlier extreme positions are not scientifically tenable'. I'd agree with that as applied to, for example, some of Hansen's emotive excursions into popular 'science' with his death trains, submerged Manhattan highways, and suchlike, not to mention the relentlessly rising temperature projections to which we were all exposed, along with some small print about them not being 'forecasts'. Not so much forecasts as clubs to beat us all into line. Now of course, they tell us not to get too hung-up on a single statistic like global mean temperature. That particular club having become too floppy to scare anyone much.
John Shade
Jonathan: As I already said, I have suspicious moments these days. I enjoyed and agreed with your original comment about the surprise discovery of lukewarmism on the L&C thread. Perhaps one can be too bothered about rubbish spouted soon afterwards. Or perhaps not.
Richard Drake
John Shade: Not just saying all those things, as Hansen did, but equating those who did not immediately agree both about the ridiculous dangers, and the policies said to be justified by them, with Holocaust deniers. I must agree that being patronised by people such as this as finally coming round and getting it roughly right … some would no doubt say it was good for the soul. I wouldn't. It's time to fight, especially against the term denier and against the ruinous policies, two things I increasingly see as connected. And of course clean up our own act where possible.
Richard Drake
Thanks Jonathan, over the years I have developed two styles of writing: that of Julius Caesar, turgid but brief; and Marcel Proust, turgid but rambling. Neither deals with the issue of comprehensibility.
The biggest surprise and indication of the naivete to me was that they imagined they'd be allowed to negotiate a new agreed position with sceptics, I've long thought they haven't realised what they're doing with their prognostications, now I'm confirmed in that view. Richard actually said that he'd been told when preparing the SPM for AR5 that the scientists would have the last word, which only goes to show what an incredibly nice and innocent person he is.
The notion that the scientific community would be able to come to some sort of rapproachement with the sceptical community is as so unlikely that it is risible. There is a whole political edifice built on their science and they don't seem to understand they won't be able to change their positions in any way what so ever. Not that I believe Ed and Richard imagined they'd have to they seem to believe the sceptics have changed theirs. Curious.
geronimo
I haven't read the (damn) thing yet! Neither the short version nor the long one.
I also noticed andphysics, ( a UK blogger) who ran a thread with close to a thousand comments demanding Andrew Montford not appear on the BCC (because he was not competent enough with the science), eagerly discussing climate sensitivity issues with the Bish. Go figure.
My position is slightly different (or is it? I'm not sure there are no others who think like this). As Doug Keenan like pointing out, it has 'warmed' fine, but warmed compared to what? I don't think this question has been satisfactorily answered at all.
Secondly, the earth has what we identify/label as warm and cold states no doubt, but as pointed out by Philip Richens (who provided citations for numerous papers dealing with natural variability at an earlier point), the earth's climate system has a natural oscillatory tendency to keep moving between these states on its own. This is opposed to the orthodox 'forcing causes change' framework, but it can be easily seen why (a) if the former operates, it can appear as the latter, i.e., a naturally, randomly fluctuating system can appear to support 'forcing' by agents that co-vary with the fluctuations, and (b) both forcing-driven changes and natural variability can operate together. What is 'cold' for us is just a hydrologic equilibrium state the planet occupies for a while before moving on.
I can see why adding greenhouse gases would cause global change, but, unless these changes are unequivocally rapid and sufficiently large in magnitude, we are not going to be able to detect them over and above the already fluctuating climate system, which by the way shows variability at all timescales.
shub
...which by the way shows variability at all timescales.
A characteristic of complex chaotic systems.
Martin A
... unless these changes are unequivocally rapid and sufficiently large in magnitude, we are not going to be able to detect them over and above the already fluctuating climate system, which by the way shows variability at all timescales. ShubA characteristic of complex chaotic systems. Martin A
So why the panic? Please? Somebody? Anybody?
Mike Jackson
The panic Mike is to make sure we implement loonie environmentalist policies without discussion.
geronimo
This thread has run its course now, and thanks to everyone, especially TinyCO2 who managed to get into my thick skull the reason the cliscis were triumphant, daft is it is, but if I could I'd like to finish with an epilogue.
Through all this scare/panic I have wondered what was in the minds of the scientists supporting it with a reckless disregard for the rules of science, foremost of which is caution in expressing certainty. Not all, that's for sure, but some. What about the others? The ones who model the future, surely knowing that whether they're predictions of projections doesn't matter, they are little more than guesses, but the must know they'll be used by environmentalists and understood by politicians as predictions.
After all they are pushing a scientific theory that changes people's lives, and maybe will destroy an economic system that has brought billions of people out of poverty, improved the health, live expectancy and increased the educational opportunities for those billions. A system that generated enough money to have literally hundreds of thousands of people in the UK alone spend their entire lives studying a whole host of scientific and non-scientific topics. Yet they seem oblivious of their role in trying to destroy it, in their role in allowing fanatical human haters drive up energy prices with a clearly stated goal of stopping growth and bringing down capitalism. How do they think scientific funding will fare in a non-growth economy?
There is little doubt that there are dark forces out there trying to bring down our civilisation through stifling growth it's written down in Agenda 21 and the objectives of the Club of Rome and many others too have made known their disdain for the current prosperity in the Western Industrialised Civilisations. And yet, we have a scientific community swimming in money from this prosperity actively endorsing fake upcoming catastrophes so those dark forces can bring it to its knees.
What are they thinking? How do they think they'll be perceived by future generations?
geronimo
Sorry, geronimo, but the thread's course must run a few minutes more. That was a magnificent summary and cri de coeur. OK, I'm done.
Richard Drake
Yes, geronimo's last comment spawns more thoughts.
I think there’s a level of naivety about action and consequences. Because the warmist obsession is AGW they can’t see that there are more issues involved or at least they assume that such considerations are someone else’s problem. They don’t seem to understand that a huge range of possible warming scenarios is in many ways less use than no warning at all. Until they can narrow the range down and prove their calculations are accurate, societies just won’t do more than flirt with CO2 reduction. All the Lewis and Crok paper proves is the science is still wide open. With another 10 years data the sensitivity range may go down… or up. Or just get wider still.
Maybe scientists should be made to debate what we do about AGW? Maybe they need to see how impossible action is if you don’t know what you’re aiming for or if the evidence of CO2 catastrophe doesn’t balance the certainty of a low energy catastrophe alternative?
TinyCO2
Am I supposed to believe you are all lukewarmers and always have been? I'm unconvinced about many of you, TBYJ being a notable exception. Here's a few choice quotes from a "Lukewarming" thread I found...
Shub reveals that he hates lukewarmers:
...the lukewarmers are the worst. They would have no reason to exist, independent of the alarmists.
Shub gives his true opinion of lukies:
if you accept alarmists' arguments, but only want to differ from them in the matter of various magnitudes and effect sizes, you are no different from them. Climate alarmism, like a religion, is a complete package. You either buy into it or not. Lukies want to do both.
TBYJ, the true warmist bares his heart:
I've been a Lukewamer for a long time on here, and I'm sure you remember that it has not been an easy position for me to carry here. Hated by both sides is never easy.
Shub again:
The difference between sceptics and lukies is that sceptics question the alternative, examine the process of exclusion of the null, and if they find it wanting or deficient, are not willing to accept the alternative.
Hilary Ostrov, talking about a rise in temperatures describes the connection with CO2 as very tenuous :
... but doesn't the IPCC statement ... "blame" most of this putative increase on human generated CO2? ...I'd be interested in knowing what evidence the Lukewarmers might have in support of this very tenuous correlation.
Geronimo gave his best "I don't know what I believe":
I believe that CO2 causes some back radiation along with other gases and make the world 33k warmer. I also believe that might not be true.
Dung denies CO2 any effect:
If we grant the basic physics (and so far I do not) the tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is incapable of having a significant effect.
Chandra
So you "lukewarmers" think that there is a problem, but currrent policies will not solve it. The scientists are able to define the processes involved and, within their limitations, suggest possible outcomes of different options. They are not the decision makers.
We elect politicians to make the policy decisions.
What would you suggest they do?
Entropic man
I noted these comments during the melee on the recent Lewis and Crok report and have been trying to understand what they meant since, so I was hoping that by showing my ignorance to the esteemed denizens of this blog I might be educated as to what all this means.
Here are the two comments:
Richard Betts:
"As I said on Judith's blog, I take this as a positive step because the debate on anthropogenic climate change is now finally shifting away from distractions such as whether warming is “statistically significant”, or whether warming has gone away, or whether humans have an influence on climate. It has moved into the area where it really needs to be – exactly how strong is the human influence, how much change can we expect in the future, and what sort of impacts/risks does this imply?"
Ed Hawkins:
"It is great to see the GWPF accepting that business-as-usual means significant further warming is expected. Now we can move the debate to what to do about it."
I feel as though I've entered the fray from a parallel universe because where I was located the "science was in" and discussions about what we could do about it had been done and dusted. Simply put we had to reduce our CO2 emissions by any means possible and at any cost, regardless of the consequences for people living today. We have already bottled the kool-aid and were in the process of administering it to the general public via the Climate Change Act and similar suicide notes had been written by governments across the western world.
While I sense a triumphalist tone in both Richard and Ed to the extent that they've won a great victory, and, as you would expect from two such nice people, are willing to be magnanimous to the vanquished. What is it all about? Victory, to me at least, was already theirs. The climate science community has already persuaded the politicians to take drastic (if futile, but that's another thread) actions, so what are they putting on the table for negotiation? They've already won hands down.