Climate Buffoons' Real Motives: 5 Reasons They Still Spout Debunked Garbage
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An abundance of theories concerning the textual paradigm of discourse exist.
. Wilson, P. H. K. ed. (1991) The Absurdity of Consensus: Expressionism and Lacanist obscurity. University of Georgia Press
If you enjoy this, you might also enjoy reading about the Social Text Affair, where NYU Physics Professor Alan Sokal’s brilliant(ly meaningless) hoax article was accepted by a cultural criticism publication.
Hat Tip Retraction Watch
- Rule 1: “Is it used to elucidate or to obfuscate?”
- Rule 3: “we are defining pseudoscience as the practice of ignoring or hiding the uncertainties in model inputs in order to ensure that model outputs can be linked to preferred policy choices”
- Rule 4: “What were the motives behind the use of such implausible assumptions?”
- Summary: “But if they have not been followed*…have good reason to be skeptical of both the motives of the modelers and the plausibility of model outputs.”
* ( Even if they were followed....projections are not data, but unconfirmed speculation )
Hi Chris and Richard:
I have paraphrased and attributed incorrectly, so apologies for my faulty memory. Sir Brian Hoskins comments came in a 10 minute segment on IAM’s (Integrated assessment models) starting at 01:25 here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mqq9x
Sir Brian was actually responding to Quentin Cooper’s point about the two economists generating three theories. Listen from 9:30 to Hear Quentin put the question and sir Brian’s response. Hoskins points out that the economic theories used in the models have not been validated. Put that issue on top of climate models which have recently been invalidated by ‘the pause’ and “Houston, we have a problem”.
For the purposes supposed to be served by IAM’s, it doesn’t really matter if the ‘missing heat is hiding’ in the deep ocean or has already left the planet, the point is is not at the surface we inhabit, farm and wade through floodwater on, despite predictions that it would be. Observations have dropped out of bottom of the range, and that’s that. If the climate model output used as the ecoomic model input is crap, it doesn’t matter how good your unvalidated theory of economy is really, you’ll still get useless output. Add in the unexpected, like Putin turning off the gas tap, or UKIP winning the 2015 general electi0n and giving the CCC and climate change act the old heave-ho and all bets are off.
It already happened in Australia, and is coming to a bunch of European countries near you next.
Thanks Tamsin, very interesting read.
I seem to have read it a bit differently than you. The main point that I came away with was that the authors see a dichotomy between models used for political/policy advice that need to be simpler, more transparent, and better vetted than those used for more esoteric research (where the other constraints you mention are less potentially disastrous). So, in terms of climate modelling, how clearly has the uncertainty inherent in the system been made to policy makers? How well have they been advised on the inability to model clouds or water vapour. How well has it been explained that a strong positive feedback from CO2 has been incorporated into models because the modellers can’t think of any other explanation for observations at the time the models were being parameterized? How well have the uncertainties associated with decade to century length forecasts been made? And so on.
A good example of why I ask these questions can be found in the report just issued by the Australian Government’s Climate Change Authority. The executive summary is worth a read – no uncertainty expressed there at all:
http://climatechangeauthority.gov.au/sites/climatechangeauthority.gov.au/files/files/Target-Progress-Review/Targets%20and%20Progress%20Review%20Final%20Report_Summary.pdf
There is no sign whatever of a greenhouse effect on either planet. The
fact that the temperature ratios are so close to that predicted solely by their relative distances from the Sun
tells us that both atmospheres must be warmed, overall, essentially in
the same way, by direct IR solar irradiation from above, not by surface
emissions from below. Keeping it simple, the atmospheres must be like
sponges, or empty bowls, with the same structure (hydrostatic lapse
rate), filled with energy by the incident solar radiation to their
capacity to hold that energy.
When I first began exploring Modtran, the numbers it produced for downward radiation at the surface seemed to make no sense. It nearly always produced the same number, and I thought that part of the program was broken. On reflection, it became clear that the numbers were correct and that I had fallen into the warmist trap of believing that CO2 really does something to the Greenhouse effect. When the numbers in the very low humidities were charted, all became clear.
.
. Wilson, P. H. K. ed. (1991) The Absurdity of Consensus: Expressionism and Lacanist obscurity. University of Georgia Press
If you enjoy this, you might also enjoy reading about the Social Text Affair, where NYU Physics Professor Alan Sokal’s brilliant(ly meaningless) hoax article was accepted by a cultural criticism publication.
Hat Tip Retraction Watch
Whether environmental modellers are wrong
Without an attempt to quantify* structural uncertainty, a modeller implicitly makes the assumption that errors could be tuned away.
* ( How about identifying those uncertainties ? Oh. It can't be done - as it requires one outline what one does not know ! )
I think it’s throughout:- Rule 1: “Is it used to elucidate or to obfuscate?”
- Rule 3: “we are defining pseudoscience as the practice of ignoring or hiding the uncertainties in model inputs in order to ensure that model outputs can be linked to preferred policy choices”
- Rule 4: “What were the motives behind the use of such implausible assumptions?”
- Summary: “But if they have not been followed*…have good reason to be skeptical of both the motives of the modelers and the plausibility of model outputs.”
* ( Even if they were followed....projections are not data, but unconfirmed speculation )
Hi Chris and Richard:
I have paraphrased and attributed incorrectly, so apologies for my faulty memory. Sir Brian Hoskins comments came in a 10 minute segment on IAM’s (Integrated assessment models) starting at 01:25 here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mqq9x
Sir Brian was actually responding to Quentin Cooper’s point about the two economists generating three theories. Listen from 9:30 to Hear Quentin put the question and sir Brian’s response. Hoskins points out that the economic theories used in the models have not been validated. Put that issue on top of climate models which have recently been invalidated by ‘the pause’ and “Houston, we have a problem”.
For the purposes supposed to be served by IAM’s, it doesn’t really matter if the ‘missing heat is hiding’ in the deep ocean or has already left the planet, the point is is not at the surface we inhabit, farm and wade through floodwater on, despite predictions that it would be. Observations have dropped out of bottom of the range, and that’s that. If the climate model output used as the ecoomic model input is crap, it doesn’t matter how good your unvalidated theory of economy is really, you’ll still get useless output. Add in the unexpected, like Putin turning off the gas tap, or UKIP winning the 2015 general electi0n and giving the CCC and climate change act the old heave-ho and all bets are off.
It already happened in Australia, and is coming to a bunch of European countries near you next.
Thanks Tamsin, very interesting read.
I seem to have read it a bit differently than you. The main point that I came away with was that the authors see a dichotomy between models used for political/policy advice that need to be simpler, more transparent, and better vetted than those used for more esoteric research (where the other constraints you mention are less potentially disastrous). So, in terms of climate modelling, how clearly has the uncertainty inherent in the system been made to policy makers? How well have they been advised on the inability to model clouds or water vapour. How well has it been explained that a strong positive feedback from CO2 has been incorporated into models because the modellers can’t think of any other explanation for observations at the time the models were being parameterized? How well have the uncertainties associated with decade to century length forecasts been made? And so on.
A good example of why I ask these questions can be found in the report just issued by the Australian Government’s Climate Change Authority. The executive summary is worth a read – no uncertainty expressed there at all:
http://climatechangeauthority.gov.au/sites/climatechangeauthority.gov.au/files/files/Target-Progress-Review/Targets%20and%20Progress%20Review%20Final%20Report_Summary.pdf
Venus: No Greenhouse Effect
The Venus atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, and supposedly superheated due to a runaway greenhouse effect, yet that portion of it within the pressure bounds of the Earth atmosphere is remarkably like the Earth in temperature. This is student-level analysis, and could not have been neglected by climate scientists, if they were not rendered incompetent by their dogmatic belief in the greenhouse hypothesis.
This has already been pointed out recently by physicists Gerlich and Tscheuschner, who have written succinctly, "...since the venusian atmosphere is opaque to visible light, the central assumption of the greenhouse hypotheses [sic] is not obeyed."
There is no sign whatever of a greenhouse effect on either planet. The
fact that the temperature ratios are so close to that predicted solely by their relative distances from the Sun
tells us that both atmospheres must be warmed, overall, essentially in
the same way, by direct IR solar irradiation from above, not by surface
emissions from below. Keeping it simple, the atmospheres must be like
sponges, or empty bowls, with the same structure (hydrostatic lapse
rate), filled with energy by the incident solar radiation to their
capacity to hold that energy.
There is no greenhouse effect on Venus with 96.5% carbon dioxide, and none on the Earth with just a trace of carbon dioxide.
My analysis does not just pluck "a multiple of Earth's temperature" out
of thin air. It investigates the simplest physical hypothesis. It
calculates the expected Venus/Earth temperature ratio, over a broad
range of Earth atmospheric pressures, if the only contributing factor is
the two planets' mean distances from the Sun (their common power
source), and finds that this minimal hypothesis is precisely confirmed
by both planetary atmospheres.
( At which time we employ Occam's Razor on proposed complications. They cannot aid accuracy. )
Epic Warmist Fail! – Modtran: Doubling CO2 Will Do Nothing To Increase Long-Wave Radiation From SkyWhen I first began exploring Modtran, the numbers it produced for downward radiation at the surface seemed to make no sense. It nearly always produced the same number, and I thought that part of the program was broken. On reflection, it became clear that the numbers were correct and that I had fallen into the warmist trap of believing that CO2 really does something to the Greenhouse effect. When the numbers in the very low humidities were charted, all became clear.
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