Climate policy continues to change

[water505]

The "97% of scientists agree" mantra might be the biggest political whopper of all time. It was proven false a long time ago, but its proponents keep repeating it as if it were gospel. It's right up there with Reefer Madness.

 

[about_average]

Though I fully believe in climate change and other environmental problems, I'd like to point out how idiotic it is to say 99.99% of scientists do anything.

Science is not democratic.

Once upon a time the known world believed the world was flat. Once upon a time the world believed we were the center of the universe. You set a dangerous precedent when you allow science to become majority rules. It becomes that much easier to control the narrative.

I hope you realize you contradicted yourself.

Ignoring the lack of evidence that any significant number of people ever thought the earth was flat, would you argue with the premise that 99.99% of scientists agree that the earth isn't the center of the solar system. Or that 99.99% of scientists agree that the earth is round? Or agree on atomic theory?

 

[phrodeau]

Did we ever get any evidence that surface temperatures stopped rising or began falling any time during the so-called hiatus? How about since?

The upper atmosphere is cooling. That's a fact. But that's because the heat from the surface isn't escaping to the upper atmosphere as much as it used to. Same amount of heat coming from the sun as always, trapped by greenhouse gasses, increases heat on the surface and leaves the upper atmosphere colder. That is why Ted Cruz can say that satellite data shows no warming for seventeen years. The satellites are in the upper atmosphere.

Science education in the US is crap, so I don't blame Ted Cruz for not understanding. I just wish he didn't talk about something he doesn't understand.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

We have the OP, we have the post he quoted and we have his repeated insistence that he was responding to, even quoted, the OP...

Fucking hilarious. I wish miles was here at times like this.

When you look so bad that you have to wish for the return of Miles to take attention off yourself, maybe it's time to leave the board.

 

[about_average]

The "97% of scientists agree" mantra might be the biggest political whopper of all time. It was proven false a long time ago, but its proponents keep repeating it as if it were gospel. It's right up there with Reefer Madness.

You're right, it's just slightly under 90% of all climatologists.
It's only 97% when you count only climatologists actively publishing papers on climate change.

 

[RobDownSouth]

When you look so bad that you have to wish for the return of Miles to take attention off yourself, maybe it's time to leave the board.

Deflection is a prime tenet of his personal philosophy (Jeet Kune D'OH!....the way of the Wingnut)

 

[JinSun]

I hope you realize you contradicted yourself.

Ignoring the lack of evidence that any significant number of people ever thought the earth was flat, would you argue with the premise that 99.99% of scientists agree that the earth isn't the center of the solar system. Or that 99.99% of scientists agree that the earth is round? Or agree on atomic theory?

Not really. I think you're taking it one step too far. If 99.99% say the grass is green, does that mean the grass is not green? Of course not. You're confusing the difference between using the percentage of scientists as evidence as opposed to using evidence as evidence. If your supporting argument for a claim is, well 99.99% of scientists believe this, there's clearly something wrong with the argument.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

From the Washington Post:

The nation’s top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.

The group’s finding that cholesterol in the diet need no longer be considered a “nutrient of concern” stands in contrast to the committee’s findings five years ago, the last time it convened. During those proceedings, as in previous years, the panel deemed the issue of excess cholesterol in the American diet a public health concern.

The finding follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now believe that, for healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease....

Eggs, salt, butter, coffee, all of that settled science of consensus that was known to be true by the vast majority of Scientists in the field (and out of the field).

 

[KingOrfeo]

The "97% of scientists agree" mantra might be the biggest political whopper of all time. It was proven false a long time ago, but its proponents keep repeating it as if it were gospel. It's right up there with Reefer Madness.

Actually, it's true, substantially, although when it comes to scientific consensus the picture is a bit more complicated than "97% of scientists agree."

 

[trysail]

How To Tell Who's Lying To You (Climate Science Edition)
by Francis Menton
"The Manhattan Contrarian"

Scott Adams -- known, among other things, as the cartoonist behind the Dilbert series -- has an excellent blog on which he posts something thoughtful nearly every day. His particular interest is in the arts of persuasion. Recently he has dipped his toe into the subject of "climate science," with a focus on the apparent inability of partisans on either side of the debate ever to convince a single person to come over from the other side. Now, suppose you come to this debate with no scientific expertise and no ax to grind for either side. The debate has very significant public policy implications, and understanding it is important to being an informed voter. How are you to supposed to evaluate the arguments and come to a view? Adams comments:

My bottom-line belief about climate science is that non-scientists such as myself have no reliable way to evaluate any of this stuff. Our brains and experience are not up to the task. When I apply my tiny brain to sniffing out the truth about climate science I see rock-solid arguments on both sides of the debate.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with Adams on this one. If you are a reasonably intelligent person, and you are willing to spend a few hours on an issue, there is a very workable method to discern which side of a debate is not playing straight with you. This method is the same method generally used by judges and juries in deciding which side is going to win a trial. The method is this: look to which side has and provides the best answers to the hard questions posed by the other side. If one side refuses to answer hard questions, or is evasive, or refuses to provide the underlying methodology by which it came up with its answers, then that side has a problem. And rightfully so.

I'll give just a few examples of this phenomenon relevant to the climate change issue...



Read the rest here:

http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2016/12/22/how-to-tell-whos-lying-to-you-climate-science-edition

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[about_average]

Not really. I think you're taking it one step too far. If 99.99% say the grass is green, does that mean the grass is not green? Of course not. You're confusing the difference between using the percentage of scientists as evidence as opposed to using evidence as evidence. If your supporting argument for a claim is, well 99.99% of scientists believe this, there's clearly something wrong with the argument.

Yeah, but trying to explain the evidence to some people is a waste of time and/or they refuse to talk to actual climatologists.

Take Ted Cruz, people were celebrating how he "destroyed" Aaron Mair, who is a epidemiological-spatial analyst. WTF? Why was he asked to testify before congress?

Or people like Jim Inhofe who proves the "hoax' of climate change by bringing a snowball to the floor of the senate. Obviously he's qualified to be chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

 

[trysail]

The Impending Collapse Of The Global Warming Scare

...To the extent that the global warming movement has anything to do with "science," EPA is supposedly where that science is vetted and approved on behalf of the public before being turned into policy. In fact, under Obama, EPA's principal role on the "science" has been to prevent and stifle any debate or challenge to global warming orthodoxy. For example, when a major new Research Report came out back in September claiming to completely invalidate all of the bases on which EPA claims that CO2 is a danger to human health and welfare, and thus to undermine EPA's authority to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act, EPA simply failed to respond. In the same vein, essentially all prominent global warming alarmists refuse to debate anyone who challenges any aspect of their orthodoxy. Well, that has worked as long as they and their allies have controlled all of the agencies and all of the money. Now, it will suddenly be put up or shut up. And in case you might think that the science on this issue is "settled," so no problem, you might enjoy this recent round-up at Climate Depot from some of the actual top scientists. A couple of excerpts:

Renowned Princeton Physicist Freeman Dyson: 'I’m 100% Democrat and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on climate issue, and the Republicans took the right side. ' . . .

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘Global warming is a non-problem’ – ‘I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong.’​

Now the backers of the global warming alarm will not only be called upon to debate, but will face the likelihood of being called before a highly skeptical if not hostile EPA to answer all of the hard questions that they have avoided answering for the last eight years. Questions like: Why are recorded temperatures, particularly from satellites and weather balloons, so much lower than the alarmist models had predicted? How do you explain an almost-20-year "pause" in increasing temperatures even as CO2 emissions have accelerated? What are the details of the adjustments to the surface temperature record that have somehow reduced recorded temperatures from the 1930s and 40s, and thereby enabled continued claims of "warmest year ever" when raw temperature data show warmer years 70 and 80 years ago? Suddenly, the usual hand-waving ("the science is settled") is not going to be good enough any more. What now?...​

-Francis Menton
http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2016/12/13/some-predictions-for-the-future-in-the-climate-game
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http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2016/12/13/some-predictions-for-the-future-in-the-climate-game





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[JinSun]

Yeah, but trying to explain the evidence to some people is a waste of time and/or they refuse to talk to actual climatologists.

Take Ted Cruz, people were celebrating how he "destroyed" Aaron Mair, who is a epidemiological-spatial analyst. WTF? Why was he asked to testify before congress?

Or people like Jim Inhofe who proves the "hoax' of climate change by bringing a snowball to the floor of the senate. Obviously he's qualified to be chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

I think that's another matter all together. Getting people to understand takes time and patience, and this year we're further than ever before, because now instead of putting global climate change as an issue for everyone, they've politicized it and made it a very democratic issue, whether or not that was anyone's intention.

 

[trysail]

The Climate Science Challenge
by Scott Adams
(of Dilbert fame)

I keep hearing people say that 97% of climate scientists are on the same side of the issue. Critics point out that the number is inflated, but we don’t know by how much. Persuasion-wise, the “first offer” of 97% is so close to 100% that our minds assume the real number is very high even if not exactly 97%.

That’s good persuasion. Trump uses this method all the time. The 97% anchor is so strong that it is hard to hear anything else after that. Even the people who think the number is bogus probably think the real figure is north of 90%.

But is it? I have no idea.

So today’s challenge is to find a working scientist or PhD in some climate-related field who will agree with the idea that the climate science models do a good job of predicting the future.


Notice I am avoiding the question of the measurements. That’s a separate question. For this challenge, don’t let your scientist conflate the measurements or the basic science of CO2 with the projections. Just ask the scientist to offer an opinion on the credibility of the models only.

Remind your scientist that as far as you know there has never been a multi-year, multi-variable, complicated model of any type that predicted anything with useful accuracy. Case in point: The experts and their models said Trump had no realistic chance of winning.

Your scientist will fight like a cornered animal to conflate the credibility of the measurements and the basic science of CO2 with the credibility of the projection models. Don’t let that happen. Make your scientist tell you that complicated multi-variable projections models that span years are credible. Or not.

Then report back to me in the comments here or on Twitter at @ScottAdamsSays.

This question is a subset of the more interesting question of how non-scientists can judge the credibility of scientists or their critics. My best guess is that professional scientists will say that complicated prediction models with lots of variables are not credible. Ever. So my prediction is that the number of scientists who ***fully*** buy into climate science predictions is closer to zero than 97%...

more...
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/155073242136/the-climate-science-challenge



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[about_average]

I think that's another matter all together. Getting people to understand takes time and patience, and this year we're further than ever before, because now instead of putting global climate change as an issue for everyone, they've politicized it and made it a very democratic issue, whether or not that was anyone's intention.

It does, but when people stick their fingers in their ears and shout, "Nah nah nah!".....well, how much time and patience do you think people have?

 

[JinSun]

It does, but when people stick their fingers in their ears and shout, "Nah nah nah!".....well, how much time and patience do you think people have?

They'd better learn to have more. What's your proposed solution?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Not really. I think you're taking it one step too far. If 99.99% say the grass is green, does that mean the grass is not green? Of course not. You're confusing the difference between using the percentage of scientists as evidence as opposed to using evidence as evidence. If your supporting argument for a claim is, well 99.99% of scientists believe this, there's clearly something wrong with the argument.

Well, here's how it works:

"Extreme political or religious conflicts resolve by war. Extreme scientific conflicts resolve by a search for better data."
—Neil deGrasse Tyson

Scientific consensus is what most scientists in a particular field of study agree is true on a given question, when disagreement on the question is limited and insignificant.

The consensus may or may not turn out to be confirmed by further research. When it is, a hypothesis becomes known as a (lower-case) theory, or, given enough time and evidence, an (upper case) Theory, such as Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Numerous times in the history of science one theory has been superseded by another as anomalies or counter-examples accrued over time and the scientific community has discarded an older theory in favor of a new theory which accounted for more of the data in a more satisfactory way. This often occurs as the result of improvements in the accuracy of the instruments used to observe, record and measure phenomena.

Misunderstanding

Pseudoscience advocates tend to see scientific consensus as just an argument from authority (or even a conspiracy).[1] This twisting of science was wrong before and the Galileo gambit — that since the notion of falsifiability exists (no theory can never be fully certain) we should then ignore the mountains of literature already available.

Portraying scientific consensus as a form of majoritarian rule is hilarious for two reasons:

1. The scientific community's inherent role is to keep a check on popularly-held (either right or wrong) opinions.[2]
2. If one study is proven correct over mainstream academic thought, it will eventually become the new consensus.

See also: Essay: Scientific consensus.

An important part of the formation of scientific consensus is peer review.

Peer review is the process of subjecting scholarly work to review by other experts in the field.

The term "peer review" is typically used for scientific and academic publications. When an article is submitted, it is sent to the authors' "peers" (i.e., other experts in the same field) to assess the quality of the work. A similar approach is also generally taken to evaluate research proposals submitted to agencies for funding, such as the National Science Foundation (U.S.) or Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), where the proposals are sent out to qualified scientists to assess whether the proposed projects merit funding.

http://rationalwiki.org/w/images/f/f4/Peer_review.png

And that is why, when 90% of scientists in a given field of science agree that fact/theory X, X being within the subject matter of that field, is true, we usually can reliably infer that X is true, or else something very close to the truth.

 

[trysail]

$100,000 Challenge Prize goes unclaimed

$100,000 Challenge unmet

http://www.informath.org/Contest1000.htm

by Douglas J. Keenan

It has often been claimed that alarm about global warming is supported by observational evidence. I have argued that there is no observational evidence for global-warming alarm: rather, all claims of such evidence rely on invalid statistical analyses.

Some people, though, assert that the statistical analyses are valid. Those people assert, in particular, that they can determine, via statistical analysis, whether global temperatures have been increasing more than would be reasonably expected by random natural variation. Those people do not present any counter to my argument, but they make their assertions anyway.

In response to that, I am sponsoring a contest: the prize is $100 000. Anyone who can demonstrate, via statistical analysis, that the increase in global temperatures is probably not due to random natural variation should be able to win the contest.





A time series is any series of measurements taken at regular time intervals. Examples include the following: prices on the New York Stock Exchange at the close of each business day; the total rainfall in England each month; the total wheat harvest in Canada each year. Another example is the average global temperature each year.

Most data sets used in the study of climate are time series. Yet there are almost no climate scientists that have competence in the statistical analysis of time series.

Statistical incompetence has misled climate scientists into believing that they can distinguish between purely random series and series generated with a trend. The purpose of the Contest is to show that such a belief is false, at least for the series of global temperatures.

Terms of the Contest
The file Series1000.txt contains 1000 simulated time series. Each series has length 135: the same length as that of the most commonly studied series of global temperatures (which span 1880–2014). The 1000 series were generated as follows. First, 1000 random series were obtained (for more details, see below). Then, some of those series were randomly selected and had a trend added to them. Each added trend was either 1°C/century or −1°C/century. For comparison, a trend of 1°C/century is greater than the trend that is claimed for global temperatures.

A prize of $100 000 (one hundred thousand U.S. dollars) will be awarded to the first person who submits an entry that correctly identifies at least 900 series: which series were generated without a trend and which were generated with a trend.

For instructions on how to submit an entry, see the Contest Entry page. Each entry must be accompanied by a payment of $10; this is being done to inhibit non-serious entries. There is a limit of one entry per person.

A person submitting an entry must also specify their real name. Names will be kept confidential, except in very unusual circumstances. If someone wins the Contest, though, then their name will be made public. If the name that they specified at submission was not real, then the prize is forfeited.

Anyone considering submitting an entry should read my critique of the statistical analyses that have been done by the IPCC. The critique illustrates some of the potential pitfalls in analyzing the time series.

(During the generation of the 1000 series, in the first step described above, the initial 1000 random series were obtained via a trendless statistical model, which was fit to a series of global temperatures. The trendless statistical model is preferable to the trending statistical model relied upon by the IPCC, when the models are compared via relative likelihood.)

After someone submits an entry to the Contest, the entry is assessed as to whether it is prize-winning. The person who submitted the entry is then informed about the result of the assessment. No further information is provided to the submitter: in particular, the submitter is not informed about how many of the 1000 series their entry correctly identified.

The Contest closes at the end of 30 November 2016 (UTC), or when someone submits a prize-winning answer, whichever comes first.

When the Contest closes, the computer program (including the random seed) that generated the 1000 series will be posted here. As an additional check, the file Answers1000.txt identifies which series were generated by a trendless process and which by a trending process. The file is encrypted. The encryption key and method will also be posted here when the Contest closes.


UPDATE [2016-12-01]. The Contest has now closed. No winning entry was received. The ANSWER, the PROGRAM (Maple worksheet), and the function to produce the file Answers1000.txt (with the random seed 7654321) are now available. There are also some Remarks on the Contest.



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[JinSun]

Well, here's how it works:



See also: Essay: Scientific consensus.

An important part of the formation of scientific consensus is peer review.



http://rationalwiki.org/w/images/f/f4/Peer_review.png

And that is why, when 90% of scientists in a given field of science agree that fact/theory X, X being within the subject matter of that field, is true, we usually can reliably infer that X is true, or else something very close to the truth.

I understand how we get the percentage, that's not being questioned here. I'm referring to when people/government/media outlets use the percentage as the driving factor as their evidence, and that is a slippery slope to being able to say whatever you want about anything because, "well 97% of scientists said so!"

I understand that every time someone wants to bring up a study they shouldn't have to source every known thing just to prove a point. All I'm saying is that we need to take everything with a grain of salt, because even 100% of scientists can still be wrong. After all, we're just very small people who know very little about a very large world.

 

[trysail]

They've been diddling the historic temperature record.




http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISS%20Jan1910%20and%20Jan2000.gif



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[about_average]

$100,000 Challenge unmet

Maybe there's a perfectly good reason it was unmet.

Why I decided not to enter the $100,000 global warming time-series challenge

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

From the Washington Post:



Eggs, salt, butter, coffee, all of that settled science of consensus that was known to be true by the vast majority of Scientists in the field (and out of the field).

"The nation’s top nutrition advisory panel".

Obviously the first thing you did was try to find out just who was on this distinguished panel and since you do could you please point us to the peer reviewed papers they wrote.

This isn't like, "The nation's top ad visor on energy said..." and the Sec of Energy is Rick Perry.

 

[water505]

Actually, it's true, substantially, although when it comes to scientific consensus the picture is a bit more complicated than "97% of scientists agree."

A bit more complicated is liberalspeak for their putrid lies being facts.

97% of scientists absolutely do not agree GW is man made and/or a threat to the planet.

 

[water505]

Liberals cling to this issue by their fingernails...not unlike how Barry claimed people were clinging to their guns and religion.

There is no amount of proof that will ever convince you guys that the GW scam is just that...a hoax. You fell for it just like you did Obama. Big surprise.

 

[phrodeau]

A bit more complicated is liberalspeak for their putrid lies being facts.

97% of scientists absolutely do not agree GW is man made and/or a threat to the planet.

So you said before.

Got any evidence to support your theory of current climate?