RC piece

I have a piece up on RC about a particularly nasty little bit of noise in Forbes recently.

Idiocracy

From the comments on the toy story, "Vinny Burgoo" points out:

Google Ngrams: the world's most flawed evil toy? Still, here are its results for 'global warming' and 'climate change' in British English:



and in American English:



Comments?

Thanks (continues Vinny in response to his own query). I will.

Those graphs might suggest that Americans are far more reluctant to be educated about climate hoo-ha than are Europeans. If so, this would be confirmation of a long-known phenomenon - in Europe, anyway - rather than anything new but perhaps its presentation in such a simple, graphic form might convince American journalists, campaigners, bloggers and expert witnesses that there's more to world opinion than the prattlings of their little stolen empire between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. I thenk you.

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I agree with Vinny's assessment (though I'm surprised that Vinny is a Brit as the nom de plume seems so Okefenokee-esque). The graph seems to show that Americans think "climate change" and "global warming" are two names for "the problem" when in fact they are obviously two different related concepts.

The "problem" remains "climate disruption", and recent events will probably turn out to fit into that perspective. Radiative forcing is the cause, warming is a symptom, disruption is the problem, and anthropogenic climate change includes all of the above.

And since this will inevitably lead to some talk about Dunning-Kruger, notice Stoat's observation on this graph:



Not only are Republicans clearly susceptible to D-K syndrome, we find that no self-identified Republican will admit to incompetence on a question!

What to do when the global superpower is an idiocracy?

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Oh, and let me offer one small example of this phenomenon at work on the ground. I saw this mess and in good faith offered a formal definition of the technical term "forcing". So far it has not appeared. I wonder why not?

Krugman: Growth Possible in a Finite World

Krugman believes commodity prices will rise inexorably as the world develops. But somehow that is okay.

So what are the implications of the recent rise in commodity prices? It is, as I said, a sign that we’re living in a finite world, one in which resource constraints are becoming increasingly binding. This won’t bring an end to economic growth, let alone a descent into Mad Max-style collapse. It will require that we gradually change the way we live, adapting our economy and our lifestyles to the reality of more expensive resources.

But that’s for the future. Right now, rising commodity prices are basically the result of global recovery. They have no bearing, one way or another, on U.S. monetary policy. For this is a global story; at a fundamental level, it’s not about us.

I wish I believed this but I can't convince myself. Endless growth at a more than infinitesimal rate R on a finite planet implies endless decline in impacts per unit of wealth at a rate 1/R 1/(1+R), and an asymptote where ultimately any economic activity has infinitesimal impact. Exactly what "wealth" means under the circumstances is not clear.

And the problem isn't just academic. For the entire 9 billion people to have a ceiling below what two generations of growth in the west implies yields a fifty-fold decline in impact per unit wealth in the same period. (*)

I wonder what economists are thinking. Krugman is a smart man and a decent one, but how he manages to square this circle completely escapes me.

I think we can live happily (and pretty much capitalistically if that means that much to you) ever after if we lose the idea of growth. We don't need to lose capitalism to reach sustainability. But it looks to me more and more like we need to lose economic theory as it exists.

(*) Update: and even that assumes that the current impacts are sustainable!

Getting Uncertainty Backwards

Since we are already warming and we expect to be warming too much, the only argument against policy is strong new evidence that the warming is overestimated. Arguments for large uncertainty are definitely of scientific interest, but do not weigh against vigorous policy. Rather, quite the contrary.

Interestingly, there is a large overlap between those arguing for uncertainty and those arguing for laissez faire greenhouse gas policy. That position is fundamentally incoherent.

Lindzen and Spencer do not fall into this trap - they advocate for a low sensitivity with high confidence, a confidence that does not seem justified but at least is consistent with their policy positions. Broecker on the other hand argues for a very high uncertainty and very vigorous policy response. So climate scientists align coherently.

But people from outside the field often take the position that "this science is unsound, so how can we take action?" This nonsensical position is common among the people sidetracked by the millenial data sideshow.

The point is that there is a real sensitivity in the system that is clearly nonzero, and that there are various ways to establish a confidence spectrum as to what it might be.

That sensitivity propagates through various impact risks, each with its own confidence spectrum.

And whether we accept a dollar denomination or not, the aggregate risk is some combination of the component risks.

Much is made of whether the physics has a fat tail, but the fact remains that the impacts do have one-sided fat tails. If there are benefits to the coming changes, they are smallish compared to our worst fears (methane feedback, new deep ocean circulation, ice sheet collapse). This is why, the greater the emphasis on uncertainty, the greater the risk.

However often I say this, it seems to fall on deaf ears. Please make the effort to understand.

If the IPCC has understated uncertainties then it has understated risks.

I am amazed that those least concerned about uncertainty tend to be the ones talking about the risks the most while those most concerned about it tend to be the ones who are unconcerned.

This is clearly the result of professional denialist talking points playing up uncertainty. The thing is, they have managed to confuse just about everybody outside of science.

There is a great deal we don't know. The recent breakdown of the Arctic vortex with consequent severe winter weather in the eastern USA and western Europe is not something I had heard much emphasized in the predictions. The (amazingly immature) crowd of naysayers is now crowing about how little we know, and defenders of science are casting about for excuses. Wrong wrong wrong.

Things nobody saw coming are starting to happen. Already. This is bad news. Uncertainty is really very high. This means we had better get this carbon thing under control.

You keep using this word uncertainty. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The World's Most Evil Toy

In time for last Christmas, somebody released transparent tubes full of tiny plastic pellets. What a fun game! Look for the odd shaped pellet! Woo hoo!

Isn't that great! You can sell manufacturing waste as a toy! Brilliant!

Eventually every one of the tiny seed-sized pellets will end up outside of the transparent plastic tubes. Then the fun really begins!!!

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Just because there isn't a law against it doesn't mean you should do something.

Nice Review of Pielke's New Book

It's something of a lucky break R Pielke Jr's latest book was lost in the shuffle of the failed effort at a PR explosion for Lomborg's movie. A double dud. Still the book is out there.

There's a first rate short review of Roger's book by science journalist David Levitan, of whom I had not heard until just now, at the IEEE spectrum. It summarizes the whole Lomborg/Pielke position nicely. Here's the best part:

If Pielke’s first tenet is the completely unrealistic and potentially counterproductive divorce of science from policy, his second, as evidenced by the meager carbon price, seems to be aiming low in the name of political expediency. He suggests five bucks only because it seems feasible and cites the support of Exxon Mobil’s CEO as evidence. Seriously, Exxon Mobil. "The precise amount of the tax itself—whether $5 per metric ton, or $10, or only $3—is less important than that the tax be implemented at the highest price politically possible," Pielke writes.

Such "pragmatism" amounts to bargaining ourselves down in advance of the bargaining that we have to do with others. Pielke’s carbon price will force fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil to do absolutely nothing differently. Pielke admits this, noting that the point is simply to raise money for renewable energy technology innovation. Such a path, though, ignores the vast scientific consensus that we need to start lowering emissions yesterday.

Absolutely perfect. That's about the best two paragraph summary of Pielke Jr's meanderings I can imagine. Congratulations and thanks to Dave Levitan.

Alphabet Soup Press Release

IDLO / CISDL Legal Working Paper Series

on Sustainable Development Law on Climate Change

The International Development Law Organisation (IDLO) and the Center for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL) are pleased to present our 2010 Legal Working Paper Series on Sustainable Development Law on Climate Change. This Legal Working Paper Series gathers recent and updated works by IDLO Experts and CISDL Legal Researchers, addressing key issues from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP 16 negotiations:

• * Freya Baetens, Foreign Investment Law and Climate Change: Legal Conflicts Arising from Implementing the Kyoto Protocol through Private Investment.
• * Sébastien Jodoin, Rights-Based Framework for Climate Finance.
• * Sarah A. Mason-Case and Prof. Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, International Law and Climate Finance.
• * Benoît Mayer, International Law and Climate migrants.
• * Frederic Perron-Welch, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation: Mexico’s Solution for Offsetting Emissions while Respecting Indigenous and Local Community Rights.
• * Josh Roberts, Linking Climate Change with Biodiversity-Related Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
• * Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger and Markus Gehring, Trade and Investment Implication of Carbon Trading for Sustainable Development.
• * Sean Stephenson, Making Jobs Work: The Right to Work, Jobs and Green Structural Change.
• * Dr. Charlotte Streck, How Climate Change can Catalyze Sustainable Land-Management.
• * Verki Michael Tunteng, Legal Aspects of Climate Change Policy.
• * Patricia Parkinson and Dr. Andrew Wardell, Legal Frameworks to Support REDD Pro-Poor Outcomes.

Please visit http://www.cisdl.org/news.html to access these papers. Comments and thoughts are welcome and may be sent to aharrington@cisdl.org

Kilowattses

Via the ever-interesting Daily Dish, a link to "vorjack"

It’s kind of a shame that reality is too slippery for us to quantify the amount of wrongness. Think of how useful it would be to if we had a unit of wrongness. Let’s say we had a unit – for absolutely no reason at all let’s call it a “beck” – that would allow us to express how wrong something is. “Ooh, close, but you’re wrong by 3 millibecks.” or “Whoa, off by a kilobeck.”

Of course, in our turf the right unit would be a watts. This could lead to some confusion between, say, kilowatts and kilowattses, but watt can you do?

Being Such a Scientist

Anna Haynes writes:

Hey Tobis, O/T but can you maybe open a thread please for discussion of the latest Benshi post?
(Beating Up the Nerds: The Profession of Science has a Full Scale Public Relations Crisis)

(I want to make the point that medical science isn't climate science, and so to tar the latter with the former's failings is obfuscatory. But there being no comments thread there, I must bite my tongue (or fingers))

Slashdot is on this turf today too.

I am a bit overwhelmed but will note in passing that this is (yet another) topic I hope to get to someday: how much trust to put into the imperfect scientific process, or keeping the baby while doing something about all that bathwater.

It is in fact the case that the problem being identified here is specifically a case of medical science going off the rails; the closest analogy in the climate world is much more in the turf of its critics than of its practitioners. But that's very far from a claim that climate science is our healthiest and best functioning institution these days. It's a mess, partly because of the mix of malign and merely skeptical attacks, partly because universities and national labs are organizational backwaters. But it's not a complete mess, and the specific vulnerabilities discussed by Lehrer don't apply.

How should we deal with a flawed but not broken institution delivering important and unwelcome advice? Not the way we're doing it, clearly.

What ARE the real flaws? I've been reluctant to address them publicly. Is that right or wrong? People are having enough trouble with much simpler concepts...

Update via Daily Dish:

Jonah Lehrer revisits the "tendency of many exciting scientific results to fade over time":

One of the sad ironies of scientific denialism is that we tend to be skeptical of precisely the wrong kind of scientific claims. Natural selection and climate change have been verified in thousands of different ways by thousands of different scientists working in many different fields. (This doesn’t mean, of course, that such theories won’t change or get modified—the strength of science is that nothing is settled.) Instead of wasting public debate on solid theories, I wish we’d spend more time considering the value of second-generation antipsychotics or the verity of the latest gene-association study.

Garbled Reasoning at WUWT

Stop the presses, huh?

The WUWT folks have been making hay out of some completely garbled nonsense as usual. They habitually (at best) don't understand what they are looking at and proceed to interpret it to support their peculiar certainty that modern CO2 greenhouse effect somehow doesn't work, so we can spew as much of it as we like, and of course that was always guaranteed by liberty or something.

Anyway there's a particularly striking example up on an article by Don Easterbrook.

First, he shows a graph by Richard Alley, no less:



And then somehow jumps to:

So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010. Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list.

Well, this is quite silly. You aren't exactly comparing apples to oranges, but you are comparing apples to applesauce. 1998 and 2010 are contenders for warmest year in the instrumental record. As such, they are probably the warmest yearss in the last 2000 years or so, but certainly not in the past 8000 years. Mainstream climatology ha[[ily stipulates that the period from 8000-6000 years ago was warmer than today, but not by much.

Mentioning 1934 (a contender for warmest year in the USA) is just silly beyond belief.

But the global mean is about 15 C, and the graph is centered around -31 C, so what accounts for the 50 C (90 F) difference? Well, the graph refers to a signal called the delta-O18 temperature proxy. It is a regional temperature for the region of Greenland. What's more, this proxy is effectively a multidecadal running average, not an instantaneous temperature. And finally, the "present day" is geologists' jargon for 1950. The last 60 years don't show up in ice cores or in the record as shown.

So, to recapitulate:

2010 is the hottest year on record or close to it globally

2010 or 1998 is likely the hottest in thousands of years globally

6000 to 8000 years ago was a bit warmer than today. We will probably cross that threshold soon enough but we haven't yet.

By the end of the century, unless we get a grip we will be seeing the warmest years in the last tens of millions of years, but we are not there yet.

The graph measures multidecadal running averages regionally up to 1950 and cannot be directly compared to annual global averages.

It's nonsense.

I like it better than the recent nonsense in Forbes magazine because it only makes one uninformed point rather than a dozen. But it's noise. Noise, noise noise.

It is still pretend science and not real science. Somehow the political sector needs to learn to tell the difference. A tall order, but crucial.

Update: Gareth has more at Hot Topic.