I don’t really want to focus too much on global warming, greenhouse gases and eco-Apocalypse on this blog, because there’s more out there to talk about. For those fascinated by the debate, there’s Climate Audit which does a much better job of understanding what is, and is not, real than I can.
But I was fascinated to read this article about Robert Geigengack, who is a) a geology professor and b) a liberal who criticizes Al Gore and his Oscar winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” as
… a political statement timed to present him as a presidential candidate in 2008….The glossy production is replete with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, and appeals to public fear as shamelessly as any other political statement that hopes to unite the public behind a particular ideology
Geigengack is on the same faculty as Michael Mann of the famous “Hockey Stick”. I wonder if they converse any on this subject.
I do agree with Geigengack though - there’s way too much politicking and trying to silence opposition than actual hard fact.
A new book written by a coastal geologist and an environmental scientist called “Useless Arithmetic” has just been published. Subtitled “Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future” the book is a guide to how mathematical modelling used in environmental sciences mostly derives from faulty assumptions and a willingness to believe the results of those faulty assumptions when they are fed by a computer.
Richard Feynman called this belief in the results of computer power “a disease” in science and its particularly rampant today in climate sciences.
According to Greek mythology, Zeus once released two eagles in order to find the center of the earth. One flew east and the other west. The birds met at Delphi, which lies on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. From about 1400 b.c. to a.d. 381, the Oracle of Delphi held sway at what was the most important shrine in all of Greece. The oracle could be more accurately described as a succession of priestesses, each given the title of Pythia. For twelve centuries the oracle played an influential role in ancient history and determined the course of empires.
Built around a sacred spring, the shrine to the oracle attracted people from all over Greece and far beyond, who came to pose their questions about the future to the Pythia. Her cryptic answers covered everything from optimal sowing and harvesting times to when an empire should declare war. As she responded to questions, seemingly in a trance, her inarticulate cries were interpreted and written down by an official scribe. In early times this transcription was rendered in hexameter verse, but later it was written in prose. The priest Plutarch said that the trance was the result of vapors, and indeed this may have been the case, for according to a recent geologic study, the presence of ethylene gas (once used as an anesthetic) has been detected in the vicinity of the spring.
The oracular responses were notoriously ambiguous, and their interpretation was often “deduced� only after the event to which they referred. Arguments over the correct interpretation of an oracle were common, but the oracle could always clarify or give another prophecy if more gold was provided. A good example is the incident before the Battle of Salamis, in which the Greeks defeated the Persians. The Pythia first predicted doom and later predicted that a “wooden wall� (interpreted by the Athenians to mean their ships) would save them.
Fast-forward 2,300 years and we find a world that still highly values and relies on prediction. Modern-day oracles are expected to provide predictions over a much wider range of things than the Oracle of Delphi could ever have imagined. In fact, with all the politicians, pundits, government agencies, stockbrokers, scientists, and academics offering their views today, we citizens are inundated with advice and suggestions derived from predictions about the future.
This use of climate models has been noted by me before (although readers of Realclimate won’t see it thanks to Gavin Schmidt)
The Greenhouse forcing hypothesis fails tests where it predicts phenomena that are not occurring such as the Arctic Polar Amplification and even fails to predict Antarctic Cooling except by reference to post hoc rationalization. It also predicts increased storminess outside of the natural cyclical nature of the climate which cannot be seen except by an extraordinary appeal that all or nearly all climate variation seen today cannot be natural.
GW theory is used not to predict future climate change to to rewrite the past, a past history which refuses to conform to the all-encompassing theory of Greenhouse Gases. That is what the climate models are for, not to predict the future because they make no falsifiable predictions on any testable timescale but to rewrite the past according to an orthodox belief that appears immune to disproof.
Climate models are clearly used to predict the past, or at least rewrite the past according to the prior beliefs of the modellers. They cannot predict the future.
The claims made about climate models appear to get more and more bizarre. From a recent BBC News article about a food chain collapse in the Eastern Pacific, comes this incredible statement:
In the meantime, they say, we must change our approach to managing and using these ecosystems, particularly for fish stocks.
“The most prudent course of action is to begin to think differently about what is happening,” said Dr Lubchenco.“Climate models predict increasing uncertainty with wild fluctuations. We should expect more surprises.”
O RLY? How does a climate model predict “increasing uncertainty with wild fluctuations” Dr Lubchenco?
The question is: are these models really useful rational tools or are they unfalsifiable oracles whose prognostications can only be understood by a special priesthood interpreted after the event they are meant to be predicting?
Just occasionally, when the lies fly so thick and fast, you have a Voltairean “J’accuse” moment. This is mine.
On February 9, 2007, the Boston Globe printed an opinion piece by an Ellen Goodman entitled “No change in political climate“. In it, the brave woman decides that the best way to help the environment is to buy an expensive light bulb.
On the day that the latest report on global warming was released, I went out and bought a light bulb. OK, an environmentally friendly, compact fluorescent light bulb.
No, I do not think that if everyone lit just one little compact fluorescent light bulb, what a bright world this would be. Even the Prius in our driveway doesn’t do a whole lot to reduce my carbon footprint, which is roughly the size of the Yeti lurking in the (melting) Himalayas.
We’ll return to those melting Himalayas in a future post , but for now let Ellen set the tone down to the lowest slopes of hell:
By every measure, the U N ’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises the level of alarm. The fact of global warming is “unequivocal.” The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get.
I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.
Ah yes, its something that anyone who has had any questions about human-caused global warming, especially if you’re a climatologist or statistician or simply a scientist who has done the hard work investigating the Global Warming phenomenon, has had to contend with: the gratuitous ad hominem attack that if you question or are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming causing future climate catastrophes then you can be legitimately compared to those who deny matters of historical record as well documented as the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe from 1938-1945.
Just in case you think Ellen is a fringe figure trying to get attention with outrageous comments like that, here are some others:
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