You have to wonder- what were these guys thinking? The only media visual they could have chosen that would send a worse message of forecast certainty was a dart board…or maybe something else?
MIT’s “wheel of climate” – image courtesy Donna Coveney/MIT
The Greenhouse Gamble: Ronald Prinn, director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, and his group have revised their model that shows how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century without substantial policy change. Standing with the group’s “roulette wheel” are, from left to right, Mort Webster, professor in the Engineering Systems Division; Adam Schlosser, principal research scientist at the Center for Global Change Science; Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry; and Sergey Paltsev, principal research scientist, MIT Energy Initiative.
Popular Science writes:
It’s time to call your bookie, because the line on global warming is in. A new paper from MIT breaks down the odds of different outcomes from global warming, based on whether governments take action now or later. And if you’re taking that action, bet on “government getting involved” to beat the spread, as last week an important climate change bill made it out committee in the House of Representatives.
The bill, named the American Clean Energy and Security Act, would institute a cap-and-trade program, and reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent over fifteen years. The plan also calls for increased research into alternative energy, and provides $750 billion in subsidies to consumers to help offset the increase in energy cost the bill would cause.
See the compete article here
With that kind of cash payout, and since an MIT odds calculating machine is involved in making the modeling forecasts over 400 model runs, maybe this would be a more appropriate prop for the MIT photo op:
Forget the SWAG (Scientific Wild-A$$ Guess) – we’ve now moved on to the realm of the WAG.
I can just see Dr. Robert Stadler of the State Science Institute nodding approvingly at Dr. Floyd Ferris and his crew of third-raters (characters from Atlas Shrugged – with their modern day figures playing their roles in real life).
400 model runs – this sounds like what is commonly called a “Monte Carlo simulation” – no joke. Thus, the slot machine graphic is more appropriate than you think.
On another note, did anyone notice, that their “best case scenario” on the wheel was still warming 3-4 deg C. Talk about not knowing how to pitch your deal – so we sacrifice pretty much everything & we still get most of the warming – all pain, no gain (assuming the models are actually correct, which is a huge assumption, but thats a whole other topic). Of course this is obvious in the numbers coming out of any analysis of a cap &trade proposal, but usually lawmakers bury this fact so that “their people” dont realize that even if they have the theory right, all the policy really does is enrich the government coffers withe little to no perceptible effect on climate. Clearly these scientists in the photo didn’t think about how the real world functions & how this photo would be perceived before putting that graphic together – although they sure look proud of it in that picture.
This photograph is exactly correct: No mater how you spin it, the house always wins.
And ‘the house’ is the AGW promotion industry.
Greg Cavanagh (19:43:58) :
I don’t understand this “…and provides $750 billion in subsidies to consumers to help offset the increase in energy cost the bill would cause”.
At one time the US income tax was just a tax on the super wealthy.
Now anybody who has an income pays the tax, therefore if you have a job (by original definition) you must be wealthy.
No – wait – it’s not WAG. It’s MIT’s verson of Wheel of Fortune!
Personally, I don’t think the word ‘scum’ is appropriate for this forum. More in-keeping with r*alclimate perhaps, but not here.
“Looks like you spectacularly missed the point.”
Which is..?
Indeed, they certainly have
Michigan Scientist, Ethicist Urge Scientists to Speak Out on Environmental Policy
Excerpt:
No wonder there is such a problem. I can’t believe this is what science has become.
E.M, Smith:
Good comment about the why of raising prices then providing subsidies for those who pay them. I agree that we are better off not knowing the details of how the scam works. Philosopher Ayn Rand once said IIRC, “Dont bother to examine a folly. Ask what is it designed to acomplish?” The answer is of course, a public behavior deemed desireable by those in power regardless of the rights and desires of the individuals that make up the public. Dictatorial control over you and me.
To add a little of shame (if they are still capable of that feeling), the words of Russian astronomer Khabibulo Abdusamatov on “climate change”: “It´s Hollywood Science”
http://www.giurfa.com/abdusamatov2.pdf
I’ve always said that the Weather Channel’s methods of predicting the weather seemed like they just sat in a room, and threw darts at a dart board while taking turns passing a joint…Now we know the truth…Guess they decided to hide the joint from the camera…But, take a close look at the look on the guys’ faces…definitely STONED!
Thought balloons (left to right):
Guy #1 – Step right up (suckers). Ya can’t win if ya don’t play!
Guy #2 – Ooh, ooh! Can I spin it now?!
Guy #3 – I’m the senior scientist. See how distinguished I look. I carry the water for these other guys. They used to be my graduate students, you know.
Guy #4 – Where’s Vanna? … What, wrong show? Doesn’t matter; we’ve moved on.
What’s the point, indeed.
It’s the same old racket that’s been going on for years. The government takes money from people, takes a cut, and then gives it to other people. Only when the government does it, nobody calls it theft.
This is highly embarrassing for MIT. This is not science. This is simply BS. This will not go down well with engineering professionals around the world. Unfortunately, what little reputation MIT has left is being ruined. A few ywars ago I cancelled subscription to their Technology Magazine once I realized what nonsense it was. Quite sad to see such an institution self destruct. It will also not help MIT grads get jobs – nobody wants this kind of hyperbole and attention seeking extremism in their firm’s engineering department.
They ought to re-label their climate wheel so that it reads:
Us four pictured here at MIT are…
1) dimwits
2) alarmists
3) tree-hugging kooks
4) enrolled via an administrative mistake.
5) escaped from a mental institution
this is pretty funny….no mention of human destruction of habitats or deforestation, etc., only climate change. i guess a species is considered “invasive” only if its introduction is accidental!
Scientists plan to relocate species
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42601/178/
As climate change destroys habitats, scientists have been considering relocating species into more suitable environments but have been put off by fears of damaging the new ecosystem. Now, a group of researchers has come up with a tool to evalauate the potential success of such managed relocation.
Managed relocation has been condemned by some scientists for fear that relocated species would overpopulate their new habitats, cause extinctions of local species, or clog water pipes as invasive zebra mussels have done in the Great Lakes. Nevertheless, some conservationists and groups have already used managed relocation or are currently considering doing so.
“The Greenhouse Gamble: Ronald Prinn, director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, and his group have revised their model that shows how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century without substantial policy change. Standing with the group’s “roulette wheel” are, from left to right, Mort Webster, professor in the Engineering Systems Division; Adam Schlosser, principal research scientist at the Center for Global Change Science; Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry; and Sergey Paltsev, principal research scientist, MIT Energy Initiative.”
Those guys are really from MIT?
I thought it was a photoshopped stunt on your part.But golly they did it all by themselves!
gargle……….
It is interesting that this follows on the heels of the House of Reps. failing to get Waxman – Markey rushed through last week . Apparently they didn’t have enough votes to pass it and so sent it back to committee(s) . Indeed , the Speaker went to China to ask them to make some sort of concessions in their expanding coal fired power generation . It looks like cap and trade might be in a little trouble this year . BTW , floods of calls and emils to our Rep. prevented him from commiting to it .
RW (03:34:09) :
“Looks like you spectacularly missed the point.”
I think this shows exactly how group think has affected these guys. They are so invested in “AGW is real” that they think everyone else will look at this the same way they do. They totally missed that they could be made to look like fools.
I think that says more than a little about their entire project.
In the AGWers battle between honesty and effectiveness it is increasingly more likely (say, 90%?) that effectiveness wins out over honesty.
I’m sure they will have some version of the 2 wheels (the other supposedly illustrating the range and likelihood of climate change that will happen even with aggressive policy change, ranging from +1 to +4C, and the most likely being +2 to +2.5C) in Copenhagen.
What buffoons these so-called “climate scientists” are.
May these “climate wheels of misfortune”, and their perpetrators live in infamy, along with Mann and his Hokey Schtick graph.
“”George Antunes (06:11:57) : look at the look on the guys’ faces…definitely STONED!”
No, that’s the Body Snatchers look. When they pass Richard Lindzen in the hall they raise their arm, point at him, open their mouth, and make that eerie sound. I wonder if Richard Lindzen feels like Donald Sutherland :
I sort of thought that we as thinking “seemingly intelligent” human beings were working our way to eliminating, or at least weaning ourselves away from irrational behavior as a group. I was wrong. These fools are either totally deluded and moronic – or -well – totally deluded and moronic.
The picture does say something important. It is “people”, “individuals”, who are running the climate models. The models are based on human-written code.
Sometimes, human-written code does a good job simulating a complex process, but mainly when there are well-known rules and empirically proven formulae to rely on.
In the case of the climate models, the temperature impact from CO2 has a big range of potential values to use:
Temp C change = [ X * ln(CO2 Future/CO2 280)] * [ Y/per Watt/metre^2]
… and CO2 Future ranges between 600 ppm and 900 ppm
… X ranges between 1.0 to 5.0
… Y ranges between 0.1C to 1.0C
The individuals get to decide what values to put into the human-written code and we still don’t have any empirically proven values to rely on.
We just have some guesses/assumptions from the IPCC. The MIT model looks to have chosen some high-impact “values” for these assumptions.
More fun: Increasing albedo:
http://green.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090526/sc_afp/climatewarmingusbritainchu.html
Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the guy in the suit look a bit smug?