Nice blog about global warming.
I suppose that, to somebody who doesn't do science, a comparison between theoretical climatology and planning an economy may sound valid, but from a scientist's perspective, it's wild, given the categorical differences between the difficulties inherent in climate modeling and the difficlties inherent in the socialist calculation problem.
In other words: nice try, but this is not that! This is closer to protein simulation or aircraft design--this improves as the pieces of the differential equation are better understood. The socialist calculation problem, on the other hand, was fundamentally intractable as it required instantaneous knowledge of both present and future demand. But to someone on the outside, all science looks like voodoo. How do they do that, and what are all those squiggly symbols?
But you don't come out and make the categorical claim that Kalafut's work on RNA Polymerase (in submission) or the changepoint problem (in submission) is not to be trusted, because there's no ideological bias against the implications.
I presume that you had a look at the Science article. Once again (remember when you got the solar activity thing backwards?), you're seeing implications that simply aren't there!
The Roe and Baker work--an excellent paper, by the way--cannot legitimately be used to back a claim for climate models being unreliable, but rather for there being an inevitably large uncertainty associated with the predicted mean temperature, in other words, for the predicted distribution of temperatures to be broad.
"Unreliable" would mean that the models are wrong, that there's a systematic error. Uncertain means that the precision is limited.
Limited precision doesn't give one license to expect anything aside from the mean--the statistical expectation value--of the distribution to be what is observed. It doesn't legitimately give one license to categorically doubt the warming thesis or to advocate that, even though continuing anthropogenic warming is predicted, governments act as though it is not. Reasonable doubt about the precise amount of warming does not justify unreasonable doubt, does not justify claims that the models are "unreliable".
The models are already accurately portraying what is happening and why. They're not doing it with precision They could be better, but they're not so far off as to justify the contention that modeling the climate is like planning an economy!
Have a look at figure 3 in the Roe paper and note the skew of the distribution. The mode of the climate sensitiviy as calculated based on the Soden and Held study is about 2.75 degrees K, and about 3 for the Sanderson et al study. That means the expectation value is slightly higher than 2.75 (Soden and Held) or 3 (Sanderson). There's not a lot of mass in the probability distributions to the left side of the mode
Thus at this point, the cautionary actions means acting as though the expected warming will happen, acting as though the state-of-the art studies of the consequences of that warming will be true, and being on our toes in case we do end up in the far tail of the distribution. It means mean setting up either a carbon tax (e.g. the "tax shift" away from income that has been proposed by Mankiw) or cap-and-trade, and starting to ratchet down emissions. It means treating an observed sensitivity to the left of the mode as a "lucky break".
It does not mean worrying ourselves to inaction over the prospect that climatologists Got It All Wrong. It does not mean "do nothing". It does not mean you can call people who don't whimsically translate imprecision into "unreliability" and categorical doubt about the AGW thesis "alarmist" and pretend they're basing their position on something that isn't there.
Roe and Baker's final paragraph:
"Despite the enormous complexity of theclimate system, the probability distribution of equilibrium climate sensitivity is well characterized
by Eq. 3, which reflects the straightforward, compounding effect of essentially linear feedbacks and depends on only the two parameters f and sf. We have shown that the uncertainty in the climate sensitivity in 2 × CO2 studies is a direct and general result of the fact
that the sum of the underlying climate feedbacks is substantially positive. Our derivation of hT (DT)
did not depend on nonlinear, chaotic behavior of the climate system and was independent of details in cloud and other feedbacks. Equation 3
appears to explain the range of climate sensitivities reported in previous studies, which are well synthesized by the IPCC (1). Furthermore, reducing the uncertainty in individual climate processes has little effect in reducing the uncertainty in climate sensitivity. We do not therefore expect the range presented in the next IPCC report to be greatly different from that
in the 2007 report. On the basis of the values of f and sf compiled from our analysis of a large number of published results, it is evident that the climate system is operating in a regime in which small uncertainties in feedbacks are highly amplified
in the resulting climate sensitivity. We are constrained by the inevitable: the more likely a large warming is for a given forcing (i.e., the
greater the positive feedbacks), the greater the uncertainty will be in the magnitude of that warming."
The models are already accurately portraying what is happening and why. They're not doing it with precision They could be better, but they're not so far off as to justify the contention that modeling the climate is like planning an economy!Brilliant, Ben... brilliant. //EVERY// single GCM out there has been prognosticating increase in temperatures, and for the last seven years they've been wrong -- atmospherically and now we know oceanically.
When is the evidence going to be enough for you to wake the fuck up?
The GCM's are //not// accurate. They're not even close.
You say the models are accurate not precise. No model predicts the cooling ocean for the last five years. All the models said the oceans would warm. That is neither accurate nor precise that is dead wrong. The modelers admit that they still don't understand the effects of clouds nor do the models contain the information necessary to factor cloouds in accurately -- let alone precisely. The models predicted a steady rise in temperatures instead we got years of relatively stable temperatures with a big drop last year (and I believe it will happen this year as well).
You say climates are more like aircraft design than like an economy. I disagree fully. The economy and the climate both have vast numbers of factors to take into account far exceeding the examples you gave. Both climate and the economy contain feedback loops that change the system. Both contain vast areas of unknowns which can't be factored into the models. Both suffer from the lack of centralized knowledge necessary to model them.
You know, I tend to agree with your comparison to the war in Iraq. I even mentioned it in my review of Al Gore's slide show:
The previous digression applies to global warming -- an issue which I sometimes consider to be the left's version of 'Saddam has WMD and he wants to kill your babies'.
http://27months.blogspot.com/ 200...persuasion.html
However, I wouldn't be too critical of the modelers so much as those who are coopting those models to push their political agenda. I say this as a person who develops biological models
I have no problem with models being used for scientific purposes. But there is a different issue when politicians use the models to make public policy -- which is what is happening.
The problem isn't so much that politicians use models to make public policy. This happens all the time, just look at the Federal reserve or estimates of unfunded liabilities.
The problem is when the results of models are misrepresented. There's nothing wrong with considering the results of climate models, what must also be on the forefront of the policy makers mind is the uncertainty of those models, what was excluded when creating those models, and how new information is likely to skew those models.
Basically models should be a decision making tool not a propaganda tool.
Ian:
I'll wake "the fuck" up when your side comes up with more than a hand-wavy explanation of why a good deal of recent climate change shouldn't be attributed to human activity.
Step 1 would be to quit conflating motes and beams, quit arguing irrelevancies, and to quit mis-citing papers.
The semantic ploy based on Roe and Baker is a genuinely low tactic.
"Global warming has stalled therefore we can't trust the attribution studies " is foolhardy. RSS says we're in the middle of a two-year downturn; so what? "So what" can't be answered by hand-waving, it must be answered by science. Lacking a thorough explanation personally does not give one license to fill in the blank with whatever he likes. Point me to a technical article explaining how I must be asleep on this one.
It must be interesting, to live in a superstitious world in which one cannot do science because every deviation wholly negates a theory. Lamb shift? Throw out basic quantum mechanics!
Very curious, by the way, that CLS cited the Willis et al Geophysical Research Letter, which clears up this ocean cooling mess. Of course, Gavin Schmidt remarked on the matter back when it was actually a hot-button issue. Of course, you didn't look there, Ian. Waking up, "the fuck" or otherwise, means starting to wrap your head around the issue by reading what scientists have to say and ignoring the spin. You can disagree, certainly, but the rule of thumb is that you'd better know why.
CLS: You don't need to know an exact quantum state to model molecules--just ask a local chemist about density functional theory!--and you don't need "centralized knowledge" as it is spoken of in the context of the old economic calculation debate to model climate.
Are there feedbacks? Yes. Does that worry me? No. Sophomore math students learn how to deal with feedbacks. Feedbacks are a common everyday phenomenon in theoretical science.
Are there "unknown unknowns"? Yes. Does that give us license to throw away the conclusions of the best science and make up our own? No. Imprecision does not mean lack of accuracy.
Have another look at the Willis et al study; the result has my claim back on firm footing.
Ben!: Come on!!! Demanding the skeptics come up why “recent climate change shouldn’t be attributed to human activity” is reversing the burden of proof. It is like me asking you to come up with why “recent murders” shouldn’t be attributed to Ben.
Also when you say we are now in two years of a downturn shouldn’t you also include that before that we were in eight years of relatively stable temperatures not climbing temperatures?
You also say that feedbacks are understood. In fact the feedback loops in climate are wider than anyone knows and of the ones that are known they admit they don’t know how they work. You have a computer model that is riddled with guesses and henches and the values of the modelers.
The absence of any warming in the oceans since they put in the monitoring system six years ago is a big alarm bell. The warming advocates say it “ought” to be warming but admit it isn’t. So they assume it proves that they are missing something else.
This reminds of cops who have a suspect. They are convinced the suspect is guilty and then come across a huge piece of evidence that ought to fit, if the suspect is guilty, but it doesn’t. So they conclude they missed something else and keep looking for evidence to fit the theory.
I’ve been trying to follow the debate for at least 20 years. The warming scientists have been pretty clear about what their models indicated would happen. What happened didn’t fit the models. The projections showed that rising Co2 would lead to a consistent and relatively steady rise in global temperatures (on land, in the atmosphere and in the oceans). We’ve instead had a plateau followed by cooling on land and in the atmosphere. And with the more accurate ocean monitoring system in place we have seen six years with no warming, but a slight cooling.
CLS said:
With great amusement it was discovered, after the collapse of central economic planning, that the Soviets were convinced that U.S. prosperity resulted from a secret, central planning agency that had to be directing everything. Their mindset was such that they couldn’t conceive of things working any other way.
That's hilarious! Do you have a reference for this? I wasn't able to google one up, probably because the relevant search terms are too general.
I am on the road for a few days so I can't look it up now. I think I know who said it but I have to get the spelling. He was a former Soviet economist.
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