In defence of skepticism on climate change

Major Karnage explains that skepticism is the only way to believe the science and not the spin

Reviewing the "Heartland affair", Robert Murphy notes how one climate scientist did not think that the actual evidence against Heartland was enough and decided to forge a more "damning" document; and how gleefully the rest of the climate change movement began adopting this clearly forged document with no skepticism whatsoever: Diminished Climate Alarmism: Lessons from L’Affair Heartland — MasterResource

Now to be sure, climate science isn’t the same thing as politics and the blogosphere. Just because these climate alarmists showed ridiculously bad judgment when it came to the Heartland affair, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wrong about the trajectory of global temperatures in the absence of mitigation strategies. However, I do think this episode—and the reaction of the skeptic community during Climategate—are quite illustrative of the two camps’ approaches to the actual science. Back when the Climategate emails were first spreading around the Internet, I distinctly remember many people in the comments at blogs such as ClimateAudit warning their peers by saying things like, “Guys, remember, we’re skeptics. This is too good to be true. Let’s not jump up and down on this, because it might be a trap to make us look gullible.” In contrast, the major players on the other side—when Heartland was “caught” saying things that were far more absurd than what the Climategate emails revealed—jumped with glee. For example...

Walter Russell Mead posits his analysis of the incentives leading to distortions in the climate debate: How Green Gullibility, Hyperpartisanship Are Wrecking The Climate Movement | Via Meadia.

• The climate movement’s proposals (above all, the global carbon treaty that in theory will subject the economic output of  every country on earth to global controls) are radical, costly and virtually certain to fail.
• To be enacted, these unpromising measures require an unprecedented degree of consensus, as every major country on earth would have to accept, ratify and then enforce the climate treaty the movement seeks.
• The climate movement must therefore be, in Dean Acheson’s words, “clearer than truth” in order to stampede public and elite opinion around the world into a unique and unparalleled act of global legislation.
• Because many in the climate movement believe that this treaty is literally a matter of life and death for the human race, the moral case both for stretching the evidence and attacking critics of that agenda as aggressively as possible looks strong to weak minds.
• The absence of any central authority or quality control in the climate movement (and the tendency of unbalanced foundation execs and direct mail contributors to provide greater support to those ready to take more aggressive action and espouse more alarming ideas) gives more radical and less responsible voices undue prominence and entangles the whole movement in dubious claims.
• The increasing obstacles encountered by such a poorly conceptualized and poorly advocated agenda cause the embittered and alarmed advocates to circle the wagons and become both more extreme in their rhetoric and less guarded in their claims when precisely the opposite approach would work better.

I must say that I have a lot of sympathy for this position, although I do not think the phenomenon is limited to the "the world is ending" side of the debate; the other side is just as irrational and just as selective in its facts/deliberately deceptive for policy reasons. What we essentially have is a political debate posing as a scientific one. The best example of this is the fact that the most commonly cited reason to believe in the climate change alarm is the supposed "scientific consensus" shown through petitions like this one -- the idea being that if 31,487 scientists agree with something, it can't possibly be wrong. The very idea makes a mockery of

the scientific process. Since when was science measured by opinion polls?!? By politicising the issue so radically, scientists are forced to take sides, and measuring the number that each side has is hardly productive towards settling the debate. Just look at this paragraph from NASA's website: Climate Change: Causes | NASA

In its recently released Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there's a more than 90 percent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.

The "Intergovernmental" is revealing of quite how politicised the debate has been from the very beginning -- the "science" of climate change is not being determined independently, but by people with clear vested interests in a certain outcome. This leads to situations like that 90% figure, which I will translate for the non-mathematicians amongst you:

The 90% is the significance level of the model that they have created to show changes in the climate over the past 250 years. A mathematical model is similar to other models, in that it is a smaller, simplified version of a complex original. What they have done is taken all known measurements of temperature in the world and averaged them out per year to try and find the "global average temperature over time"; then they have incorporated all of the factors that they know to affect the environment in order to find an equation that "models" the effects these things have; then they test how well the model fits the actual recorded temperatures. The "significance level" shows the probability that any one point on the model will reflect the actual observed temperature.

To say that there is a 90% probability that human activities have warmed the planet is misleading. In actual fact, the model that the IPCC generated including estimated human greenhouse gas emissions has a 90% chance of fitting the observed results -- which is a far less persuasive statement; especially since, as anyone who has formally studied statistics would know, general practise is to work to a 95% significance level.

This is not at all to say that CO2 emissions are not playing a role in warming our climate or that the climate is not warming: both of these points are, more or less, beyond dispute. What I am saying is that -- contrary to what a certain Australian Government keeps telling us -- the science is not "settled". There is a lot we have left to learn and a lot that is uncertain.

Of course, to deny the proven science is not productive either. In fact, I would recommend a healthy dose of skepticism whenever you read anything related to climate change, pro or anti. Nothing outside of the internal debates in the scientific community hold much water these days.

And no Ms Gillard, the science is not "in". Science does not come "in", we're not talking poll results. That's not how science works.

Major Karnage is a Sydney-based young professional. This was originally posted on his personal blog. 

Major Karnage can be followed on Facebook or Twitter.

Comments

[Georgina]

1.

Very good article And what happened in the pre-idustrial age, the climate did what it wanted to do, as now, cooled and warmed, warmed and cooled. Just go back to the Moche people of Peru in 600AD (a good example) and it can be seen that this happened in that era as it has done since the planet was formed and the universe was formed, sun, moon and stars, all have a bearing on climate, especially the former. Billions upon billions has been, and is being, spent on something which man cannot control and will be completely wasted. This money could have been better spent on the starving peoples around the world and their education to help themselves, water conservation, crop growing,control of population etc.

[Drewski]

2.

What was said in that forged document that couldn't be found in the same batch of legitimate documents from Heartland? Nothing. So why focus on that?

The IPCC is intergovernmental so therefore it has vested interests?!? That makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever. I doubt there are many governments that have a vested interest in spending huge amounts of money to retool their economies unless they believe there is a damn good reason for it.

It is much more likely that the so called vested interests would be those parties that are hoping that their profits aren't jeopardized or that they can avoid spending money. Who do you think those parties could be?

[kraka]

3.

Hey drewski (probably Drew Hutton)-no-one with any brains doesn't know how corrupt the UN is.(of which the IPCC is part of). The UN is the most vested interest entity on the planet, full of back slapping, self congratulating socialists who are big on words and short on action. The IPCC has consistently lowered the rhetoric on AGW from 100% sure to if, maybe,could be, most likely,somewhat likely etc as the real world data and facts have destroyed the AGW theory.Can you pay my share of the carbon tax seeing as i won't be compensated. Better still can you live without electricity, water, fuel, a car and everything else that requires co2 emissions in its production so that i may use them without paying the tax on everything?

[dante]

4.

Kraka, each of you comment is a classic. You don't have a clue. Nobody is advocating ZERO emission of CO2. If you listened and paid some attention, the argument is about ACCELERATING climate change. It can be DECELERATED by reducing the emission of CO2. We have a choice, we can reduce gradually now or be forced to reduce when we exhaust crude oil, coal, etc. None of fossil fuel source is INFINITE. We live in a FINITE world. The only thing infinite is your ....

[dante]

5.

How much money would climate change skeptics put on a horse that has been given a 90% chance to win by 31,487 horse trainers and others experts?

Major encourages readers to be skeptic but he fails to say what to be skeptic about. Should we be skeptic about the science? No, he says that “to deny the proven science (of climate change) is not productive”. Should we be skeptic about the model used? No, he correctly states that models of “complex” systems have by necessity be “smaller, simplified” versions of reality. Despite these valid concessions, he dismisses model findings on the basis that a “90% chance of fitting the observed results” is not a persuasive statement. Major’s lack of real science experience is extraordinary. If models of a system as complex as our climate predict and match actual data with a 90% “significance level” then only a person with no science knowledge could advocate for a better match.

The only reason Major tells us to be skeptic is that “31,487 scientists” agree that “human activities” are responsible for warming the planet. For a start this isn’t what 31,487 scientists said. They said that human activities over the past 250 years have ACCELERATED the rate of climate change. Climate has changed before humans walked the planet and will change after we leave. It’s the rate of change that is worrying. Somehow Major thinks that “31,487 scientists” agreeing with each other “makes a mockery of the scientific process” and is “politicizing the issue” thus forcing scientists to take sides. Based on these arguments, the concept of gravity, agreed by millions of scientists, is a political argument and it’s forcing scientists to take side. Accelerated climate change due to human activities over the past 250 years is a scientific fact, just like gravity. Why 31,487 scientists agreeing with each other about this scientific fact should surprise? Millions scientists agree on many other scientific facts and this does not diminish their scientific value. Only conspiracy theorists with too much time to spare and little scientific knowledge would think that 31,487 scientists would conspire because of “vested interests”. Don’t we all believe in gravity because of our “vested interest”? Isn’t slowing down the rate of climate change our “vested interest”? In which planet do skeptics live?

The fact is that nothing will convince climate change skeptics, not a 90% fit, nor a 95% fit nor 100% fit. Nothing, nada, niente, zilch!!!

[Anton]

6.

Don’t we all believe in gravity because of our “vested interest”?

To which theory of gravity are you referring? (Newtonian, Einstein or the yet to be formulated quantum model, or one of the other theories?)

About your 31487 scientists. Something again from Einstein (actually a real scientist):

one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact

You don't get science, do you?

[Grumpyoldman2]

7.

I note that all our arguments about alarmism and scepticism gravitate back to to the key term in the whole fabrication surrounding climate change.

That term is the grossly misunderstood 'Temperature' and just how it is measured and interpreted.

There is no means to measure or estimate surface layer temperatures over the whole of the earth's surface in any meaningful way that allows the measurements to be 'averaged' out at various times in the past. Other than to conclude that some pollens or tree rings at specific locations lead us to think that location showed warming or cooling weather trends. And we would expect any location to show that based on observation today, summer is warmer, wetter, dryer, cooler than winter depending where we are.

Suppose. over the last 100 years or so we have gathered a big enough sample of temperature estimates from weather stations scattered over the surface and ships at sea. We do not have a scientific definition of what "averaging" these means or how that figure can be related to another ill-defined term, climate.

Ditto CO2. Except there are some reasonable means of estimating atmospheric CO2 content with geological time. Today it is improperly lumped in as a major atmospheric pollutant 'greenhouse gas' by alarmists and politicians even tho' the content has varied hugely over millions of years and been vital to our evolution, not once detracting from it. It is far less important as a greenhouse gas than water vapour. Even governments have not sought to tax that.

The choices of temperature, climate and CO2 have been cunningly chosen being impossible to prove or disprove but at what cost? Time will tell.

[Anton]

8.

Actually, "climate scientists" have an even more fundamental problem:

They have still not presented a scientific definition of climate. To state that something is changing, a scientist must first define what that something is, and how it is measured.

To be scientific, the definition of climate must be quantitative, objective, invariant and relevant.

Which variables are included, what is their relative weight and relationship, and what is the time span over which they are measured?

Currently the most scientific definition of climate is the one we teach primary school children - polar, desert, tropical etc. By this definition, climate has changed very little over the past thousand years.

Climatology - the new religion for the stupid. (for proof see comments 4 and 5)

[kraka]

9.

I never said anyone is advocating zero emissions dickhead (strike one). Accelerating climate change-puhlease-that one came up after all the other false premises were consigned to the dustbin of history and is equally not based in fact 9strike 2). Can be decelerated by reducing emissions-that is bullshit and unprovable and not based in our historical geological records. The climate and temperature has changed remarkably more and quicker than anything that is occuring now in our past-this is indisputable-and it happened when co2 emissions could not possibly have been the cause (strike 3). You are out (of your mind).

[kraka]

10.

Agreed Anton- Gallileo was right, everyone else was wrong. Copernicus was right, everyone else was wrong. And more recently the two Aussie nobel prize winners were right about ulcers and everyone else was wrong.Dante just keeps flogging the dead horse in the hope it wil get over the line.