For information: [I have posted this elsewhere ]
—————————————-
Apropos of climate studies: Here is Dr Roger Pielke Sr on a recent paper in the Journal of Climate. The paper used “high resolution weather prediction modelsâ€. For “the eastern United Statesâ€, these regional models “predicted†very much higher temperatures “for five future summers†than did the global model from which the regional models were derived.
Dr Pielke listed some “remarkably serious shortcomings of the model studyâ€. His final para reads:
“Equally disturbing (or it should be to anyone who values scientific credibility) is that a peer reviewed journal elected to publish this paper in this form in which untested predictions for decades into the future were presented, yet the global and regional model could not even skillfully simulate recent climate[emphasis added]. The publication of such clearly scientifically flawed research conclusions raises questions on whether the journal (in this case the American Meteorological Society Journal of Climate) is engaging in advocacy rather than being a balanced arbitrator of peer reviewed papers. Publishing predictions which are not tested, is not science.â€
——————————————
I highlight two points: 1. Senior scientists — not Dr Pielke alone — have serious reservations about using global climate models 2. Some climate studies at least have to be taken with a pinch of salt. But only knowledgeable scientists can detect these. All that lay inquirers can do is remain aware that there do exist well-based problems in climate studies.
{ 15 comments }
Whether or not the warming is caused by humans doesn’t seem to be that important. What I would like to know what will the effect of reducing our carbon output be?
All I hear is we need to cut back. I never hear what will happen to warming if we are actually successful in stabilizing our output.
If humanity throttles its output, with all the hardship that entails, and the only result is that warming slows down a bit and we hit condition X in the year 2060 instead of 2050, well, then what is the point?
Can anyone point me to where the cost AND benefit of the proposed reductions are examined?
ChrisB,
You continue to place great emphasis on the validity of the peer review process in the natural sciences and specifically regarding AGW. And of course, you are entitled to your opinion.
However, as I and others have mentioned previously, the peer review process in academia is, in our opinion, seriously flawed. As an example, the economics profession’s peer-review process as applied to Austrian economists has almost completely excluded them from publication in the vast majority of mainstream journals. The large majority of economists, if they have heard of Austrians at all, regard them as renegades, if not outright cranks. If it was not for the existence of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and the Review of Austrian Economics, precious little research in the Austrian tradition would be published. And I will not repeat the terrible treatment that the economics profession generally accorded Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek.
You respond by stating that the peer review process is more rigorous and substantial in the natural sciences than in the social sciences. And my response has been that given that the same institutional influences are at work in both areas of study, the objectivity and validity of the peer review process is roughly identical in both the natural and social sciences.
I hope you realize that we are not going to agree on much by an appeal to the peer review process.
John Bigelow,
I can point you to where the benefits of INCREASED atmospheric CO2 are examined:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
ChrisB,
It’s funny that you say what you say about consensus in your comment above when you earlier cited this blogpost by William Connolley that seems to contradict you somewhat. He writes in the post: “The consensus that exists is that of the IPCC reports, in particular the working group I report (there are three WG’s. By “IPCC”, people tend to mean WG I). Its a good idea to realise that though the IPCC report contains the consensus, it didn’t form it. The IPCC process was supposed to be – and is – a summary of the science (as available at the time). Because they did their job well, it really is a good review/summary/synthesis.”
You also write above: “This is a massively important point as many people mistakenly think that becuase the IPCC is politicized, then climate science is politicized. But this is not the case: All the talk of effects on humans and the eco-system and recommendations for policy action are necessarily not a part of climate science and not a part of the consensus. Similarly, the procedures and manner of argumentation of the IPCC are not a climate-scientific issue.”
You have a remarkably idealistic picture of climate science and the funding and peer review processes within it. Climate science is both moralized and politicized. This may not show up in explicit ways in the peer-reviewed literature, although it does show up, but you would be incredibly naive to think that climate scientists are purely objective when they are reviewing each other’s work. And you would be even more naive to think that climate scientists act only as climate scientists. Many of them are quite happy to go outside of their area of expertise, become activists, and make moral pronouncements and policy recommendations based on what they think the effects of global warming will be. And the “consensus” is trotted out in support of these “non-climate science” claims. You have only to look at the media reports, the testimonies by climate scientists before political bodies, and other public pronouncements of climate scientists to see this. Climate science is highly moralized and politicized; it’s just easier to see this in public forums than in the peer-reviewed literature because peer review does put certain constraints upon language-use in the presentation of one’s findings. One area in which I think the bias in climate science shows itself is in the wide acceptance of computer climate models despite flawed assumptions and wild predictions of future scenarios.
At least one prominent climate scientist (Stephen Schneider) was even explicit about the moralization and politicization:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989, see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996; this quote is downloaded from Wikipeadia s.v. Stephen Schneider — Emphasis added, FvD).
Quite damning, is it not?
As Frank Van Dun wrote in response:
“Well, one does not always get what one hopes. Note the unpardonable irresponsibility and naiveté of Prof. Schneider’s remarks towards the end of the quotation. As a scientist, he might have foreseen what would happen to the integrity of Organized Science if it became regular practice among scientists “to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.†In the end, funding and career opportunities come from getting “some broadbased supportâ€, from capturing “the public’s imaginationâ€. Unless one lives on another planet, one should not expect that, when each of us decides what “the right balance†is between being effective and being honest, no one would ever face a trade-off between effectiveness and honesty. Moreover, not honesty but promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, inclusive of all the doubts and the caveats—that is the issue here. Science is not concerned with wether a statement is made honestly or dishonestly but with whether it is true or false. “I honestly believe†is not a scientific argument.”
And “offer[ing] up scary scenarios, mak[ing] simplified, dramatic statements, and mak[ing] little mention of any doubts [they] might have†is precisely what far too many climate scientists are doing in public forums.
I first read about the gobal climate models in the late 1980′s. They tried to validate them back then and found they failed miserably, but it wasn’t a political issue then. They didn’t try to validate them again until just recently, but only in a very limited way against esoteric phenomena. As far as I can determine, no global climate model has been validated against temperatures and found to have a reasonable error rate. They’re incredibly bad about forecasting temperatures, yet they’re the main evidence in the human-caused argument.
From ChrisB:
Chris,
Though there may be exceptions, I have not seen people rejecting climate science because it is peer-reviewed, only questioning the argument that the results are valid because it is peer-reviewed.
RogerM had a great point about peer-review in an earlier thread: to paraphrase, peer-review’s strength is that it reinforces the consensus, and thus weeds out the nuts and invalid science, and it’s weakness is that it weeds out the contrarians who might actually be right when the consensus is wrong- which has happened repeatedly since the Enlightenment.
Even though I believe the planet is warming and that human-generated carbon dioxide is at least partially responsible, I cringe every time I read an attack on a scientific study that includes the phrase “it was not published in a peer-reviewed journal”, and I cringe whenever I read a supporting comment for a scientific study that includes the phrase “it is valid because it was published in a peer-reviewed journal”.
This is a particularly convoluted argument in favor of AGW. In essence, what you are saying is that, if we are such great believers in the market’s ability to correct problems (with the very concept of “market failure” soundly rejected by some), then we should be no more skeptical of AGW than anyone else.
Let me tell you something about how the real world works.
Most voters–and most people in power–favor government solutions over market solutions out of ignorance. Economists already have a hard enough time convincing people not to support minimum wages, import tariffs, and subsidies. Do you think we are going to have any more traction convincing people not to enslave themselves to government for this cause? It’s not that market solutions don’t work, but that government solutions are so much more likely to be favored and imposed.
The fact is that most people don’t really mind giving up more of their freedoms to government, and so feel they don’t stand to lose much if AGW is proven wrong. Austrians realize the extent of what is at stake.
ChrisB,
In my estimation, the reason why there appears to be more consensus in the natural as opposed to the physical sciences is that the issues studied in the physical sciences are (at least until recently) much less politicized than those in the social sciences. Once politics becomes involves, the quality and objectivity of scientific research greatly declines. I do not believe that there is any escape from the fact that government funding, and for that matter all special interest funding, corrupts the integrity of scientific research and the peer review process.
Also, you stated:
“This has nothing to do with how rigorous peer review is in each field and everything to do with things like the nature of assumptions in each field and the way theories are formed in each field. If, say, physicists disagreed with each other as much as economists do on their basic assumptions, then it would be more likely that Mises-type lock-outs would happen in physics.â€
I do not see how this matters. Logic is logic, facts are facts, and assumptions either accurately reflect reality or they do not. For example, the strong consensus opinion holds that little government economic intervention occurred in the 1920s and that Herbert Hoover was overwhelmingly a laissez faire president. Both of these assertions are patently false, and can easily be shown so by an examination of the actions and statements of the members of the Federal Reserve and Hoover during the 1920s. What we have here are basic facts being ignored by the consensus opinion in the social sciences. What I would agree to as a differentiating factor is that quantitative prediction is not possible in the social sciences, but is possible in the natural sciences.
Regarding my rejection of the conclusions of science, frankly, most of what passes for consensus knowledge in the social sciences and humanities I would argue is substantially wrong. And in my estimation, given the increased politicization of the natural sciences and the increasing dominance of government funding of research, the accuracy of research in the natural science will continue to be compromised, at least when the research pertains to complex “macro†type systems such as climate.
The unstated implication that since climate science is “natural science” as opposed to social science and therefore its contentions involving the global warming controversy are as fully valid and established as say Einstein’s theory of relativity…is questionable to say the very least.
Please excuse my error, but the first sentence of my above post should read:
In my estimation, the reason why there appears to be more consensus in the natural as opposed to the SOCIAL sciences is that the issues studied in the NATURAL sciences are (at least until recently) much less politicized than those in the social sciences.
Dennis,
I get what you’re saying. I was really referring to ChrisB who seems to think that the phrases “peer reviewed”, “consensus” and “natural science” add much of subtance to the global warming controversy/debate.
Sag,
Thanks for the clarification. I had thought that your comment was directed to ChrisB.
Here… http://www.lewrockwell.com/baltzersen/baltzersen28.html
you will find… “The Vikings settled in Greenland, research has shown, in a significantly warmer climate than Greenland has today.”
Is there consensus about existence of Viking settlements on a ‘green’ Greenland? Is the area they once inhabited, according to this article, now frozen over – unarable, in other words?
If the above is true, that Vikings settled in a green Greenland which is now iced-over – what is the consensus about such drastic temprature changes prior to any significant man-made C02 emissions.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece this link states…. “Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
Scientists from NASA say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.”
Is there consensus concerning planetary warming on Mars roughly matching that here on Earth?
The article goes on to state “The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds………Fenton’s team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa’s Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.”
If the above information is true….it seems that the Earth has warmed rapidly and cooled rapidly without any interference from mankind. Also, according to the article nearby plantes have had similar warming trends.
If “Fenton” believes that variations in ‘radiation and temprature’ are creating ‘heat winds’on Mars….couldnt the sun be at work here since no ‘people’ are on Mars engaging in climate affecting activities.
“Whether or not the warming is caused by humans doesn’t seem to be that important. What I would like to know what will the effect of reducing our carbon output be?”
John.
Reducing our carbon output will be BAD for the natural world and there can be no doubt about it.
The energy-deprivation-crusaders talk as if the pre-industrial level of 280ppm of CO2 is the norm.
Actually THAT level of CO2 is likely pretty close to the lowest levels since the advent of macroscopic life on earth.
This is just one more way that these anti-science bully-boys have gotten things totally ass-backwards.
The Korean cloning fraud shows that consensus is not the road to sound science. Without the ability to conduct experiments that would rule out competing theories, global warming is entirely conjecture. Peer review is merely being abused to silence contrarian theories of causation.
Comments on this entry are closed.