The science of deceit
Guest post by Dr. Bob Carter, originally posted at Quadrant online
Science is about simplicity
A well-accepted aphorism about science, in the context of difference of opinion between two points of view, is “Madam, you are entitled to your own interpretation, but not to your own facts”.
The world stoker of the fires of global warming alarmism, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cleverly suborns this dictum in two ways.
First, the IPCC accepts advice from influential groups of scientists who treat the data that underpins their published climate interpretations (collected, of course, using public research funds) as their own private property, and refuse to release it to other scientists.
Thus, confronted in 1996 with a request that he provide a U.S. peer-review referee with a copy of the data that underpinned a research paper that he had submitted, U.K. Hadley Climate Research Centre scientist Tom Wigley responded:
First, it is entirely unnecessary to have original “raw” data in order to review a scientific document. I know of no case at all in which such data were required by or provided to a referee ….. Second, while the data in question [model output from the U.K. Hadley Centre’s climate model] were generated using taxpayer money, this was U.K. taxpayer money. U.S. scientists therefore have no a priori right to such data. Furthermore, these data belong to individual scientists who produced them, not to the IPCC, and it is up to those scientists to decide who they give their data to.
In the face of such attitudes, which treat the established mores of scientific trust and method with contempt, it is scarcely surprising that it took Canadian statistics expert Steve McIntyre many years to get the primary data released that was used by another Hadley Centre scientist, Keith Briffa, in his published tree-ring reconstructions of past temperature from the Urals region, northern hemisphere. When he finally forced the release of the relevant data, McIntyre quickly proceeded to slay a second climate hockey-stick dragon which – like the first such beast fashioned by U.S. scientist Michael Mann, and widely promulgated by the IPCC – turned out to be based on faulty statistical methodology (see summary by Ross McKitrick here).
A variant on this, along “the dog ate my homework” path, also involves the Hadley Centre – which is the primary science provider of global temperature statistics to the IPCC. Faced with requests from outside scientists for the provision of the raw temperature data so that scientific audit checks could be undertaken, Hadley’s Phil Jones recently asserted that parts of the raw data used to reconstruct their global temperature curve for the period before about 1980 cannot be provided to outsiders because it has been lost or destroyed. In other words, it is now impossible to conduct an independent audit of the Hadley temperature curve for 1860-2008, on which the IPCC has based an important part of its alarmist global warming advice.
So much for data perversions. The second type of common distortion of normal scientific practice by the IPCC and its supporters concerns not data but hypotheses – which IPCC likes to define in its own way to suit its own ends. This attitude often manifests itself in the fashion expressed in a recent letter sent to me, viz:
Proponents of AGW claim that their theory is supported by peer reviewed literature whilst the case against it is not. This is a very effective argument and, although Solomon’s book The Deniers goes some way to counter it, I am not aware of an equally effective refutation. If there is one I would be most grateful if you could point me to it.
In an Australian variation of this, Greg Combet, assistant to climate Minister Penny Wong, earlier this year asserted with blatant inaccuracy that “we use only peer reviewed science and our opposition doesn’t”. Other IPCC sycophants phrase it slightly differently, such as: “if you climate sceptics had a scientific point of view it would have been published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals“.
Statements such as these all reflect a fundamental lack of understanding about the way that science works. They also exemplify the way in which climate alarmists always seek to frame the debate in ways that delivers them control, especially by clever choice of language (clean energy; climate change instead of global warming; carbon dioxide is a pollutant instead of a beneficial trace gas, etc.), or, in this case, by framing a hypothesis for testing that suits their political ends rather than Science’s ends.
If you accept at face value questions and comments like the ones enumerated above, you fall into a carefully laid climate alarmist trap. For the question “why are there no papers in peer-reviewed journals that disprove the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming” is predicated, as is all related IPCC writing, on faulty science logic; specifically, it erects a wrong null hypothesis.
Scientists erect hypotheses to test based upon the fundamental science assumption of parsimony, or simplicity, sometimes grandly referred to as Occam’s Razor. That is to say, in seeking to explain matters of observation or experiment, a primary underlying principle is that the simplest explanation be sought; extraneous or complicating factors of interpretation, such as “extraterrestrials did it”, are only invoked when substantive evidence exists for such a complication.
Concerning the climate change that we observe around us today – which, importantly, is occurring at similar rates and magnitudes to that known to have occurred throughout the historical and geological past – the simplest (and therefore null) hypothesis, is that “the climate change observed today is natural unless and until evidence accrues otherwise”.
In regard to which, first, no such evidence has emerged. And, second, like any null hypothesis, that about modern climate change is there to be tested, as it has been. There are literally tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in major scientific journals that contain observations, data, experiments and theoretical reasoning that are consistent with the null hypothesis, which has therefore yet to be falsified (but, of course, one day might be).
The onus is therefore on Penny Wong and her scientists to provide some “evidence otherwise”. To give a clue how hard that task is, note that since 1988 (when the IPCC was created) western nations have spent more than $100 billion, and employed thousands of scientists, in attempts to measure the human signal in the global temperature record. The search has failed. Though no scientist doubts that humans influence climate at local level – causing both warmings (urban heat island effect) and coolings (land-use changes) – no definitive evidence has yet been discovered that a human influence is measurable, let alone dangerous, at global level. Rather, the human signal is lost in the noise of natural climate variation.
That the correct null hypothesis is the simplest hypothesis is, of course, no reason why other more complex hypotheses cannot be erected for testing. For instance, should you wish to test (as the IPCC should) the idea that “human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming”, then there are several ways that that can be done.
The result, long ago, has been the falsification of the dangerous human-caused warming hypothesis. Failed tests include: that global cooling has occurred since 1998 despite an increase in carbon dioxide of 5%; the lack of detailed correlation between the carbon dioxide and temperature records over the last 100 years; consideration of cause and effect timing of past carbon dioxide and temperature levels in ice core records; the absence of the model-predicted temperature hotspot high in the tropical troposphere; the low sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide forcing as judged against empirical tests; and the demonstrable failure of computer GCMs to predict future climate.
These matters, and that the dangerous warming hypothesis fails numerous empirical tests, have been described in many places. Such writings, whether in refereed journals or not, are simply disparaged or ignored by those who wish to pursue the alarmist IPCC line.
It bears repeating that the onus is on Minister Wong, or her advisory IPCC scientists, to provide any evidence that the null hypothesis regarding modern climate change is false. Because she cannot do so, the clever trick is used of inverting the null hypothesis to demand that climate rationalist scientists demonstrate that human-cased global warming is not occurring.
Perhaps none of this would matter particularly were we dealing only with a squabble amongst scientists. But when ministers in our governments write, as did the Queensland Minister for Climate Change recently, that “The Queensland Government, along with the Australian Government and governments around the world, supports the findings of the IPCC”, it becomes a critical matter of necessity to understand that, in addition to being political in the first place, IPCC advice is also based upon faulty, indeed manipulative, science practice.
As independent scientific advisors to Senator Fielding have shown, the IPCC-derived science advice that the Australian Government is using as the basis for its carbon dioxide tax legislation is utterly flawed. This finding has yet to be rebutted.
Senators who vote for the second version of the misbegotten and misnamed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bill will be supporting strongly harmful legislation that is based upon faulty science. Thereby, they will be abandoning their duty of care for the welfare of the Australian people.
DISCLOSURE: Bob Carter is one of the four independent climate scientists who, at Senator Fielding’s request, undertook a due diligence audit of the global warming advice being provided to Climate Minister Penny Wong by her Department. The three other scientists were David Evans, Stewart Franks and Bill Kininmonth.
On the Aussie home front again… what I and some others have described for some time is now being reported:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26266711-601,00.html
Kevin Rudd (Australian Prime Minister) is trying to position himself to be a big player in the big game of global social engineering. He appears to have more interest in global politics than the home front, with the Australian PMship a stepping stone to greater (read UN-related) things.
Never mind that Australia, as an extremely energy-intensive economy largely based around coal-fired generators, is going to suffer disproportionately more than other developed countries should the government and/or global ETS targets be adopted in legislation.
Oct 25, 2009
Crap and Tax – A Lobotomy for the United States of America?
By Kevin Klees, Engineer
OK, I’ll start right off by admitting that I am a “Climate Change” Denier, Naysayer, Skeptic, Cynic, Disbeliever, Doubter, Doubting Thomas, Flat Earther, and any other phrases that you might find in your Thesaurus. There, I admit it. Do I feel guilty about the future of the planet? No, not in the least.
Why do I reach this decision?
Because, as an engineer I have extensive training on the actual limits placed on human activities by the LAWS OF PHYSICS. For more than a quarter of a century I have tried to design things that violate the LAWS OF PHYSICS. I am ashamed to admit that I HAVE NOT BROKEN ANY OF THEM YET. As an engineer I am in the FRONT LINES fighting the LAWS OF PHYSICS every day. So far the LAWS OF PHYSICS are winning, 99-0.
So, here is one of those NASTY little LAWS OF PHYSICS, it’s called the THIRD LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. It can make for a really drowsy read, but the simple version states:
“IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TRAP HEAT”
Yep, that’s it, pretty simple; it means that there is NOTHING NATURE, OR A MAN/WOMAN CAN DO TO TRAP HEAT.
This LAW is demonstrated MILLIONS of times every day. When you put more insulation into the attic of your house, you are SLOWING the flow of heat from inside (umm, warm and toasty) to the outside (ugh, cold and wet). You are NOT TRAPPING HEAT.
Ask yourself this simple question; if a Greenhouse can “TRAP HEAT” why is it colder inside one in January than in August? Why can’t you “trap” the heat from August and use it during the whole rest of the year? Because of the THIRD LAW.
The Third Law, see icecap.us and download the PDF.
jlc (07:44:10) :
“Extraterrestrials using the fifth dimension are beaming dark energy on earth (remember 95% of mass and energy is dark) to slowly heat and thus terraform earth into a more habitable for them climate.”
Of course, this is obvious, but they’re not doing a very good job of it. Why has the warming stopped? Have they lost interest?
Evidently they want a measured rate of raise of CO2, which is happening from the heat already provided to the Oceans and the contribution of fossil burnings :). They wait until CO2 starts dropping to push up the dark energy flux. They follow the principle of least interference, “changes in terraforming should be incremental”.
Falsify that now.
jlc (07:56:53) :
Consilient?
Learn a new word today, did we, Shurl?
I Shurl did. Knot that I have a small vocabulary 🙂 since I play scrabble.
Ron,
It is obvious that you can’t trap heat. I am sure that when warmists use that phrase they are just being loose with terminology. However, it is clear that if you had a pot of water on the stove at a very low heat, the water would reach a steady state temperature below it’s boiling point. This would occur when the amount of energy entering the pot equals the amount leaving. What happens if you put a lid on the pot? It gets warmer because the lid is slowing down the rate at which the heat can leave. Then it will equilibriate at a higher temperature.
Heat is not being trapped, but heat escape is being slowed down. Just like the greenhouse gas effect is supposed to work, except in this case the contribution made by CO2 is very small.
Rereke Whakaaro (03:42:43) :
Mark Miller (01:48:48) :
Good comment.
Do you think that their lack of understanding of even the basics of science can be attributed to the way they were educated?
It seems to me that people desperately need to believe in something.
When I went to school, in what I now think of as the dark ages, science was taught as a combination of principle, practice, and history. We were drilled in Aim, Theory, Equipment, Method, Results, Conclusions. It was a mantra. I believed in science, I believed in what it could do.
If kids today are not exposed to science as a way of thinking, then they need something else. ID might fit that bill. And so might climate change, or any other conservation theme, or perhaps even spiritual mysticism.
I was wondering about that, re. education. When I first encountered the columnist I described, he told me that CO2 correlates very well with the variations in temperature we’ve seen since the Industrial Revolution. I told him this made as much sense as the Aztecs saying that the Sun rose because they made a human sacrifice to it every day! Correlations don’t mean anything. They have to be tested.
You read my mind about the comparison to ID. I brought that up with these guys as well. 😉
After the encounters I tried to think back to my own experiences with my science education. I remember we were taught the cycle of hypothesis, test (through observation/experiment), results, and analysis. I think the hypothesis was practically handed to us on a plate. We would do a series of lab exercises which were planned for the class. In our results we were supposed to think about any error that could’ve been introduced into our results, and come up with a quantitative error to add to our result papers. I think the way this was typically done is we would make a prediction using a formula that had already been historically derived, and then we would compare our observations to the predicted result. There was always some error in that regard, and so that’s the error we would put down. It taught a good lesson though, that observation will always have some error in it, and that it could be introduced through the instruments we were using in our experiments.
I remember when I was in jr. high we were taught a lot about scientific principles. I remember there were a series of cartoon movies we watched, which when I think back on them were very instructive. It portrayed a series of Greek gods (I think, or perhaps they were just Greeks who believed in multiple gods) being shown what science was. It showed the fallacies in their mythical thinking (for ex: that the god of lightning caused the storm). The main point it got across was that what we think we see is often wrong. The way to see this is to test what we think we see using a rational process. At some point in my science education I was taught to beware of correlations in data (or occurrences). They must be tested. It may have been through these movies.
We also watched the complete Cosmos series by Carl Sagan. A wonderful series on science!
I think I mostly got what science was, through my public school education, but I was a bit misinformed. It was only by listening to someone who really got to the essentials of why science was beneficial and necessary for our modern world that I filled in some of the gaps.
I honestly don’t know what kind of science education the alarmists I described had, if any. It seemed to me they didn’t have the first clue. In any case, what I saw was disturbing to me, because they spoke as though they were establishing fact. As I mentioned earlier, one of them is a columnist for my local paper. I had always assumed that a responsible publication, when it was publishing information about what’s happening in nature, it would always refer to scientific sources for information. This columnist wrote an article literally asserting his own facts, using some scientifically derived data sets he loaded into a spreadsheet, and from them concluded that AGW was real. I asked him if he had any scientific sources to back up his claim. He said no. He said he was not making a scientific claim, and did not claim to be doing so in his article. He said, “This is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal.” He made no claim to being a scientist, either. He said all of it was his opinion–at the time. Yet just a week later I found him claiming in an online forum on the newspaper’s website that his “opinion” was indisputable fact. Why? Because “I have seen nothing that contradicts it.” Of course nothing contradicted it, because it hadn’t been tested!
I eventually complained to the opinion editor about the column, saying that anyone reading it would assume that the author was making scientific claims. The editor said, “I don’t see him making any scientific claims in his article.” So that went nowhere.
What I eventually came to realize after discussing his beliefs with him is all he really had for scientific justification for them was anecdotes. He basically believed in a “probability theory” which says, “It’s highly unlikely to be anything else.”
It was clear to me these alarmists believed that the Earth system is so big that the complete phenomenon is too big to study completely. They assumed they could take their anecdotes and assume they add up to a reality. It’s basically the Precautionary Principle: We don’t have complete information on this situation, but based on this fact (X chemical is known to be carcinogenic, or CO2 is a greenhouse gas) we can assume it’s causing Y deleterious effects, which will grow worse unless we act. We don’t have to test our theory that it is in fact causing these effects, and we shouldn’t, because it would take years to study the issue. By then so much harm may have been done that the whole community could be poisoned and die (or in the case of AGW, we could reach “the tipping point” and then we’re doomed).
This was probably the reason he thought it was within journalistic ethics to use a statistical analysis to take “this is probably happening” and suggest it as “fact”.
The Precautionary Principle has been used in the past to justify shutting down plants in certain isolated locations, because people were coming down with cancer in the community, or having babies with birth defects. The idea that these maladies sometimes were within statistical norms was apparently not considered. Maybe they were right to shut these places down in some cases. With the exception of Love Canal we never seem to get to the bottom of it. The plants are just shut down and the EPA moves in, making them Superfund cleanup sites. We’ve found this acceptable in the past, because these incidents are isolated. We don’t feel that they affect the society at large. This time the advocates of this approach are running into more pushback because in this situation we’re not talking about a mining community. We’re talking about our entire country!
Ron de Haan (21:00:13)
“. . . as an engineer . . . . for more than a quarter of a century I have tried to design things that violate the LAWS OF PHYSICS.”
I thought that’s what you fellows were up to!
Be advised that you are to consider yourself under arrest. You and your co-conspirators are to cease and desist.
As a physicist, I must say that those laws are in place for a reason, don’t cha know? Matter? Energy? You want everything just flying apart?
I’d ask if YOU want order or chaos but it’s not up to YOU! Those laws were in place before you were born and they’ll be around after you are dead.
There, I said it!
Shurley’s cat must be well fed up with being intermittently dropped amongst the pigeons and abandoned.
Vincent (03:20:11) :
Ron,
It is obvious that you can’t trap heat. I am sure that when warmists use that phrase they are just being loose with terminology.
———–
I don’t really see that the terminology is loose, even. “Trap” isn’t a scientific word, as far as I know, and I might say “he trapped me in the hallway…” It doesn’t mean I’m still there. We have the same thing with holding and storing a charge. Could that be trapping and keeping?
Water vapour may well be invisible, but, in everyday English, it isn’t. Speaking of which, it’s very awkward to talk about relative humidity and dewpoints without saying that the air can only “hold” so much water vapour. It’s only necessary to elaborate if you think someone doesn’t get it. I think the warmies get that much.
As to carefully worded language, Global Warming is one also, in the 90s it would be hard to say the world was not warmer than previous, but was it man made.
Stephen Goldstein (06:23:10) : said
[i]“s. wing (04:38:58)
FWIW, here is my problem with your position . . . .
Twenty years ago, when the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming was posited it seemed plausible…”[/i]
Stephen, I’m already not following you. Are you saying there was “[b]the[/b] Theory” and it was posited 20 years ago? I don’t accept that. If so then can you state the theory? What you instead showed was someone’s model prediction from around that far back.
You also said:
[i]“…IF a prediction based on a theory is false THEN the theory is false.
And that is where we are today, in 2009 with the failure of continued warming and related predictions.”[/i]
I don’t accept that either. (And that is even if the disagreement between the temperature data and the computer output was convincing, which it isn’t really to me.) That computer model prediction will surely have had modelling, statistical and systematic uncertainties. The alleged falsification of someone’s 20-year-old computer output does not disprove, in this case, the hypothesis that humans are increasing the atmospheric CO2 concentration and it is affecting the climate.
In reply to Vincent (06:43:42) :
Thank you for your further comments and for now agreeing with me that Dr. Carter got his logic wrong.
However, you then stated: “This is true as an argument in deductive reasoning, but so far there has not been any falsification forthcoming, so it is a moot point.”
You further then criticised my “preference for applying rules of logic” rather than discussing the substantive science – specifically, the substantive science that you summarised with the statement “…logic simply cannot answer the question “From CO2, how much warming?” “.
I actually agree with your final statement, as I already indicated in my response to Tom of Florida. If I was discussing that substantive question then I would not, and could not, confine myself to only rules of logic.
However, my use of logic was merely to point out a huge error in logic in the above article by Dr Carter. The point was relevant and it was certainly not moot that Dr Carter committed the error.
Some brief replies…
Terryskinner (08:39:35) :,
I agree with your points.
Joel (09:13:24) :,
As a detail, the numbers I seem to remember are instead a slightly larger increase in CO2 concentrations from 0.028% to 0.039% of the atmosphere.
But the main point is to disagree that a gas would need to be “magic” for this change to make a difference. The ‘greenhouse effect’ is known to be a strong effect. The total effect changes the Earth’s average surface temperature by around 30 degrees celsius, with water vapour the most important gas and CO2 next. So it is very plausible that a 40% or so change in CO2 can be significant.
fredlightfoot (09:52:35) :,
You’re talking apples and oranges. I don’t accept that anything I have said commits me to the assertion that your neighbour’s greenhouse should be over 100°C.
John Nicklin (10:56:58) : & Richard (13:19:04) :,
Yes, the thickness and effectiveness of the sweater is a substantive issue. As you will understand, you are asserting that the sweater is not effective.
Allan M (11:58:57) :,
Agree a sweater does not produce energy. It instead warms you up by helping to block the escape of heat.
Smokey (09:52:52) :
s. wing (06:46:29),
You are mis-stating both the application of the null hypothesis and the scientific method. I sincerely hope it is not deliberate, but is rather the result of listening to the agenda driven folks at blogs like realclimate. If you get your information from realclimate, you are being badly misinformed.
Smokey, do you consider yourself an expert on the null hypothesis and the scientific method? Perhaps then you can be a bit more constructive in your criticism and explain why (to reprise my post s. wing (06:46:29) that uses the sweater analogy) according to Dr Carter:
1) the ‘null hypothesis’ has to be that you felt warmer ‘naturally’, not because you put the sweater on.
2) the alternative null hypothesis – that you felt warmer because you put the sweater on – is “against the fundamental science assumption of parsimony”. It doesn’t seem unnecessarily complicated to me to consider that you may have warmed up because you put the sweater on.
3) It’s “a wrong null hypothesis”, to quote Dr Carter;
4) It’s “predicated … on faulty science logic”. What precisely is the form or class of logical error that has been committed?
5) Even worse, according to Dr Carter, its “a carefully laid climate alarmist trap”. (All I did was suggested the sweater may have warmed me up. What could be so devious about that?)
In anticipation of your more detailed deconstruction of my claimed mis-statements…
Richard (13:16:07) :,
Dr Carter’s objection to the use of the word “evidence”, that you have now now picked up on, is clearly a semantic argument rather than a scientific one. And it does seem rather contrived to me.
Consider this scenario. You say “I am feeling cold”. You put on a sweater. Then you say “now I am feeling warm”. Would you object to use of the word “evidence” if someone commented “well there is evidence you took action to warm yourself up”?
I would suggest not.
Thanks to everyone who has replied on my input. My final response for now is on the questions raised on natural vs. possible man-made rates of climate variability, from:
John Nicklin (10:56:58) :
…where is the proof that CO2 overrides natural variability?
(Though note of course John that one is never going to get a mathematically rigorous proof of physical causes in the Earth sciences.)
Richard (13:16:07) : (final paragraph)
E. J. Mohr (09:24:01) :
“…temperatures have changed far more in the recent past [s.w.: presumably meaning on a geological timescale but before potential human interference] than anything we have ever seen, it is simple to postulate that natural climate variability exists and is greater than anything we have lived through. Thus far the modern temperature records don’t show anything extraordinary.”
Thanks also to E. J. Mohr (12:35:39) for posting a link to the (first of) some Youtube videos of a Dr. Carter talk on Climate Change. There at least he uses scientific arguments to address this point of whether or not there is anything unusual in the rate of global temperature change over the past few decades. This is towards the start of the second Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN06JSi-SW8&feature=channel .
Regrettably though, he uses an illegitimate comparison that fundamentally undermines his argument.
Instead of comparing like with like, he blithely compares a rate change plot from one particular site to one which is a global average.
The first plot, introduced at 1:28 into the second YouTube video, is titled “The rate of temperature change through time. From the distribution of delta-O18 from the last 50,000 years from the GISP2 ice core”
This refers to the GISP2 ice core that was extracted from a particular location on the Greenland ice sheet.
The typical rate from the last 5000 years of this plot is then compared directly against the slope of a globally averaged plot. The plot, introduced at 2:48 into the second video, is titled “Global Average Temperature – Lower Troposphere”
The natural temperature fluctuations at a particular location are of course going to be much larger than the fluctuations in a global average. Therefore the data he presents from a particular Greenland site will be a gross overestimate of the expected natural global temperature fluctuations and so cannot legitimately be compared to the rates of global temperature rise seen in the instrumental record.
This invalid comparison completely invalidates the chain of argument that is the centrepiece of Dr. Carter’s talk. Without it, he simply cannot demonstrate that recent global temperature changes are unexceptional.
Ooops a budget black hole appears in the Aussie ETS:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26284109-11949,00.html
Guess Ruddie can’t afford the 100Mb net project anymore…