AGW theorists are being misled by the principle of exclusion
Story submitted by Paul Macrae
In 1837, Charles Darwin presented a paper to the British Geological Society arguing that coral atolls were formed not on submerged volcanic craters, as argued by pioneering geologist Charles Lyell, but on the subsidence of mountain chains.
The problem, as Darwin saw it, was that corals can not live more than about 30 feet below the surface and therefore they could not have formed of themselves from the ocean floor. They needed a raised platform to build upon.
However, the volcanic crater hypothesis didn’t satisfy Darwin; he thought the atoll shape was too regular to have been the craters of old volcanos. There were no atoll formations on land, Darwin reasoned; why would there be such in the ocean? Therefore, Darwin proposed that corals were building upon eroded mountains, an hypothesis that, he wrote happily, “solves every difficulty.”
Darwin also argued, in 1839, that curious geological formations—what appeared to be parallel tracks—in the Glen Roy valley of Scotland were the result of an uplifted sea bed.
Darwin didn’t have any actual physical evidence to support these two hypotheses: he arrived at them deductively, through the principle of exclusion. A deductive conclusion is reached through theory—if X, then logically Y must be so—as opposed to induction, which builds a theory out of empirical data. The principle of exclusion works from the premise that “there is no other way of accounting for the phenomenon.”[1]
As it turned out, Darwin was wrong on both hypotheses. Later physical evidence showed that Lyell’s volcano theory was closer to the mark, and the Glen Roy tracks were caused by glaciers, which were still a mystery in Darwin’s time.
Darwin later wrote of his Glen Roy hypothesis: “Because no other explanation was possible under our then state of knowledge, I argued in favour of sea-action; and my error has been a good lesson to me never to trust in science to the principle of exclusion.”[2]
While Darwin rejected the principle of exclusion, at least as a primary scientific tool, alarmist climate science has not. Instead, the principle of exclusion is one of the most-cited arguments to support the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis.
For example, in a 2010 interview with the BBC on the Climategate scandal, Climate Research Unit (CRU) head Phil Jones was asked: “What factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?” Jones’s reply: “The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing.” In other words, Jones is using the principle of exclusion: while he and his colleagues can’t prove that human activities are causing warming, they can’t find any other explanation.
Canada’s Andrew Weaver also relies on the principle of exclusion when he writes, in his 2008 book Keeping Our Cool: “There is no known natural climate mechanism to explain the warming over the 20th century. And that is one of the many pieces suggesting that a substantial portion of the warming of the 20th century is associated with greenhouse gases.”[3]
Similarly, the IPCC’s 2007 report notes: “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” The IPCC has no empirical proof that human carbon emissions are the main cause of planetary warming; the “proof” is that the scientists can’t find another explanation, i.e., the principle of exclusion.
It’s not unreasonable to claim that human activities are the main cause of global warming. If carbon emissions and temperatures increase at the same time, it’s possible they are connected although, of course, correlation does not equal causation. And many scientific theories are based on the principle of exclusion, including much of Darwin’s theory of evolution itself.
Where alarmists like Jones, Weaver and the IPCC betray the accepted principles of science is in claiming that a possible causal connection between human carbon emissions and temperatures is settled, certain, and, as Weaver puts it in his book, beyond debate (he writes: “there is no such debate [about the certainty of the AGW hypothesis] in the atmospheric or climate scientific community” (p. 22)).
Even worse, these scientists call anyone who dares to challenge their hypothesis a “denier,” deluded, a fraud, bought-off by the oil industry, or worse. One cannot imagine Darwin, a modest scientist, making similar claims of certainty for his two hypotheses, or throwing slurs at anyone who didn’t accept them.
Yet there may well be other explanations for a warming earth that we still don’t know about or enough about—the cosmic ray theory seems like a good contender, as do fluctuations in solar intensity and cyclical ocean temperatures: given the complexity of climate, there are many possible causes for a temperature rise (or fall).
But, then, the deductive rather than empirical (inductive) nature of alarmist climate science was stated clearly by climatologist Chris Folland two decades ago: “The data don’t matter… We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”[4]
And so, alarmist climate scientists find themselves under siege by skeptics and increasingly distrusted by the public because they blindly accept the principle of exclusion, in the face of considerable empirical facts that don’t fit the AGW hypothesis. For example, for more than a decade, the earth has not warmed as the AGW hypothesis predicts. Nor are the oceans warming as the hypothesis predicts. Yet, when skeptics point out the problems, alarmists cannot admit they have made a mistake because then the whole alarmist edifice (and the juicy research grants that go with it) would collapse.
Darwin himself battled the principle of exclusion in proposing the theory of natural selection. Up to Darwin’s time, no one could think of any other way to explain the creation of species than by an all-powerful god. This led scientists and clerics into all sorts of logical absurdities, such as claims that the earth was mere thousands of years old or that God had put fossils into the earth to test scientists’ faith. However, in the mid-1800s, there was no better explanation to hand.
Darwin (and Alfred Russell Wallace) supplied a better, more scientific explanation: nature itself, acting over eons of time, was the creator of species, an hypothesis so simple and so logical that Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s main promoter, declared: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.”
The AGW hypothesis may well prove to be correct. However, the simplest and most logical explanation for climate change, in the past, now, and in the future, is natural variation. If so, then the AGW hypothesis, based on the treacherous principle of exclusion, will go the way of Darwin’s two hypotheses on the Glen Roy tracks and the creation of coral atolls.
And so, while alarmist climate scientists are quite within their rights to propose the AGW hypothesis, they should also be cautious: AGW is an hypothesis. It has not reached the status of a scientific theory (it has not passed enough scientific tests for that), nor is it a scientific fact, as the public is told. Instead, alarmist climate scientists have thrown the proper scientific caution to the winds to make claims that aren’t supported by the evidence, and to smear those who point out the possible errors in their hypothesis.
To repeat Darwin’s words: “My error has been a good lesson to me never to trust in science to the principle of exclusion.” This caution is especially true when climate-science errors could lead to anti-carbon policies that will cost billions of dollars and destroy millions of livelihoods, while having no effect upon the climate because humans are only a small part of a much larger picture.
Darwin gave good advice: beware the principle of exclusion. It’s a pity that today’s alarmist climate scientists are unwilling to heed that advice.
[1] Darwin’s thought process is described in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton, 1962 (1959), pp. 99-106.
[2] Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, I, London, 1887, p. 69. Quoted in Himmelfarb, p. 106.
[3] Andrew Weaver, Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World. Toronto: Viking, 2008, p. 59.
[4] Quoted in Patrick J. Michaels, Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming. Washington: Cato Institute, 1992, p. 83.
Paul MacRae is the author of False Alarm: Global Warming—Facts Versus Fears, and publishes the blog False Alarm at paulmacrae.com
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From TA on June 8, 2011 at 4:28 am:
You’re mixing a few things up there. Most importantly, soot (black carbon) is a solid, thus it is not a GreenHouse Gas (GHG). When the soot particles are very small (aka particulates) and suspended in the air they are known as an aerosol. The particulates don’t stay in the atmosphere forever, they eventually settle out, usually within mere days. During the last century, when people were worried about “acid rain” before high efficiency “stack scrubbers” became standard, an expected US weather pattern was precipitation in the Northeast on the weekend due to particulates released from Midwest coal-burning power plants during the workweek.
Soot has been shown to be a major cause of what has been cited as proof of global warming, namely glacier melt and Arctic warming.
LBNL on Himalayas: “greenhouse gases alone are not nearly enough to be responsible for the snow melt”
Black carbon linked to half of Arctic warming
Oh, soot! (“UI researcher finds black carbon implicated in global warming”)
New Earth-Moving UN Study Says Half Of Arctic Warming Caused By Soot (And Not CO2)!
Soot having a big impact on Himalyan temperature – as much or more than GHG’s
etc.
To mention a glacier-like loss, Mt. Kilimanjaro’s snow cap, an oft-cited poster child for global warming fears, is going away due to local land use changes.
More proof that Kilimanjaro’s problems are man-made; but not what some think it is
At least it was, a recent recovery has been noted, might be temporary.
Kilimanjaro regaining its snow cap
Claims of Arctic warming, as previously discussed here, are complicated by the lack of a proper historical record for the Arctic with very few weather stations, especially with issues like the GISS dataset extrapolating much of the Arctic temperatures primarily from a single station in Canada. With the amount of warming dubious, and black carbon capable of accounting for half of the reported warming, it’s possible there has been no Arctic warming that can’t be accounted for solely by soot.
The usual issue is global warming. Black carbon (soot) has been tied to signs of regional warming that are often cited as proof of global warming. Meanwhile, despite questionable finagling of assorted historical temperature records, the “recent wave of warming” you mentioned, isn’t happening, for a decade or more. Indeed, the evidence is pointing towards global cooling, either happening now or imminent. Thus your musings about the hydrological cycle are moot.
That a whole ‘nother can of worms. To attack it generally and give you something to consider, more atmospheric water vapor yields more precipitation which yields more vegetation, and vegetation is carbon storage. So are you certain more water vapor leads to a downward spiral?
“once you eliminate the impossible”
Climate science has not eliminated dozens of reasons for climate change having nothing to do with CO2. Top of the list is human bias. Mann’s hockey stick was accepted over-night without the normal scientific requirements for independent confirmation because it was what people wanted to see. Even today it makes no difference to many that the hockey stick has been invalidated. Mainstream Climate Science continues to insist that there was no Little Ice Age, no Medieval Warm Period, no Roman Warm Period.
Mainstream Climate Science does not believe that climate varies naturally on time scales of a few hundred years – the hockey stick “proved” this – so the only explanation left is that humans must be responsible for climate change. What Climate Science has not considered is there are many ways that humans can be responsible for climate change.
CO2 is one explanation. Another is human error and bias. Climate Science and the IPCC have not factored this possibility into their calculations. Until and unless Climate Science conducts itself using experimental method to eliminate error and bias from climate models, data collection, statistical analysis and of course “adjustments”, there is no reason to trust the result. Does anyone believe that Hansen adjusts past temperature free of bias? Why did he adjust 1934 downwards after MacIntyre showed it was the hottest year on record in the US?
We would certainly not trust medicine or social sciences conducted in this fashion.
The AGW crowd in large part use the exclusionary principle as part of thier religion. The end game in their religion is not eternal life in heaven, but the control of us ignorant masses, redistribution of wealth etc.
As has been stated, it is not about science, but forever funding of grants to prove thier holy grail of CO2 as the devil. Unfortunately it is to the detriment of many due to policy decisions running economies into the ground, and restricting an improvement in the lives of those in less developed countries. Until politicians that believe in this false religion are voted out of office, and entreched bureaucracies are replaced, we will continue to fight this uphill battle for real science. What is settled is AGW is junk science, but the beleivers have the main stream media and educational facilities at all levels promoting it.
Skywatcher says:
“The IPCC took over a thousand pages to make their case…”
…and they failed miserably.
Have to agree with Tom T: “Come back here for a real conversation when you understand a bit about what you are talking about.”
Come back when you’re at least somewhat up to speed on the topic.
It appears to me from personal observation that the principle of exclusion is really not so bad – as long as you are the one doing the excluding. Cases in point: an interview with Drs. John Christy and Gavin Schmidt.
A. Notice how the Climategate emails in question are really not of much interest – unless you are one of the scientists who has been the subject of denigrating emails for disagreeing with the Team. The principle of exclusion receives a little help through peer review, consensus, etc.
B. Notice how climate models of course are not proof of anything – but according to Dr Schmidt, they do provide evidence of manmade global warming. Exclusion principle generously applied, by assuming that the inputs in the model do not leave out major driving influences and interrelationships in earth’s weather systems.
C. Notice how the uncertainties are considerable and the case for warming being caused by man is extremely tenuous, and yet, the principle of exclusion applied generously shows us that there is a rise in temp and there is a rise in CO2 emissions by man, and CO2 is a ghg, ergo, that is enough to work from, that is, what we do know.
I think Gavin Schmidt demonstrates well for us how the principle of exclusion really can be a powerful scientific tool!
It is somewhat dangerous to strictly conflate exclusion with deduction. Exclusion is only one starting point for deduction. As any scientist knows, deduction, correctly executed, is completely reliable in and of itself, but the conclusions one draws are only as reliable as the assumptions upon which it is based. Exclusion is a risky razor to apply to facts in which there are a world of possibilities. And one must remember that “assumptions” in this case, include not only initial point of data but also the model used to arrive at final points. This is the problem with climate models today. Although they begin with doubtful data, the data themselves are not the key problem — it is that the models themselves are incomplete and, in places where they are probably basically “right”, they have completely inappropriate parameters. Even a cursory look by anyone familiar with mathematical modelling is enough to convince one that any predictive value of such models is lost. The deductions themselves are likely correct — I’ve litte doubt that competent programmers can correctly implement these models. But the models themselves are hopelessly inadequate. A further problem is that, because of the dynamics of climate, even if we could produce an in-principle complete and correct model and feed it unimpeachable data, its predictions would be useless, simply because of the nature of the dynamics being modeled.
Let us not cast aspersions on deduction, however badly practitioners abuse the art. It is in principle more reliable than pure induction from pure empirics. The best science combines induction and deduction so that they provide a check on one another.
The Exclusionary Principle is reflected in the logical fallacy Argumentum ad Ignorantium [argument from ignorance]. It goes something like this: “Since we can’t think of anything else that could cause warming, then it must be due to CO2.”
It has now ben shown that CO2 is a function of temperature: as temperature rises CO2 is outgassed from the oceans. Effect cannot precede cause. Changes in CO2 follow changes in temperature on time scales from months to hundreds of millennia. The planet is currently starved of CO2, and the biosphere is greatly benefitting from the added airborne fertilizer.
Finally, there is no evidence – none – that CO2 is causing global harm. Conclusion: CO2 is harmless and beneficial. More CO2 is better, at current and projected concentrations. It is, after all, just a tiny and beneficial trace gas.
Starwatcher,
Just to let you know – I’m a sceptic/luke-warmer, and I’m no fan of Monckton. In fact, I strongly suspect that he does more harm to scepticism than he does good. Personally, I don’t pay attention to what he says.
All of which is perhaps a tad ad hom. But c’est la vie. I’m sure he’s a lovely person when you get to know him. 🙂
In response to Starwatcher at 1:57 AM on 8 June, we find Robert Austin at 8:03 AM writing:
I have posted to the “Tips & Notes” forum my complaint about the idiotic change in the “Leave a Reply” box format which sets the work therein to a font size way to hellangone smaller than that of the Web page’s text, thereby making it extremely difficult for people with impaired vision to avoid making HTML errors (see in my most recent previous post).
If one increases one’s browser “Zoom In” function to get a decent size in the “comments” box, the text in the body of the Web page assumes scare headline dimensions, and one has to then “Zoom Out” to restore scale. This is a profound pain in the Sitzplatz. Just what the hell kind of purpose is supposedly served by this idiotic “change-for-change’s-sake,” anyway?
Anybody else interested in barraging the “Tips & Notes” page with complaints about this pestiferous stupidity?
On reading this post, the first thing that entered my head was Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional character, Sherlock Holmes. It was he who stated that once you have eliminated every other possibility, whatever is left, however unlikely, must be the truth. Of course he missed out the fact that there might be a really obvious explanation that you had simply never even thought of.
A really good test of this line of thought is magic tricks. One that is so simple to do that I taught it to my then five year old daughter, who then proceeded to amaze her grandparents with it, involves a sheet of coloured paper, a pound coin, a coloured hankie and a glass. The glass is placed beside the coin on the paper, the hankie is placed over the glass and then both are placed over the coin. The hankie is then removed revealing that the coin has disappeared. The hankie is then placed over the glass and both the hankie and glass moved aside and the coin has mysteriously returned. There is a slightly more complex version that involves passing the coin through a solid wooden table but the principle is the same. When done well the trick is brilliantly convincing and, as already mentioned, a small child can do it. Were Holmes unable to think of an explanation, he would be forced to conclude that it was real magic, as real in fact as the Cottingly Fairies. In fact, there is a coloured paper disc taped over the mouth of the glass that is invisible to the observers but covers the coin and makes it look as though it has disappeared.
In the case of climate change, the other explanation is obvious and in plain view. The climate has been changing for millions of years and humans have only existed for a few thousand years. The natural forces that caused these changes before humans had the slightest influence could possibly still be working. It is almost as if some people have been shown that there is a paper disc taped over the glass but prefer not to notice it and conclude that it is real magic.
YES, YES, YES! This is THE logical fallacy upon which the whole charade is founded. Very well stated.
Starwatcher says:
June 8, 2011 at 3:00 am
“Rebuttals on articles here are often laid out in a easily understood and highly descriptive manner (Pat Franks last one here is last example).”
Please see my rebuttal of the rebuttal near the end of the relevant thread.
BBk says:
June 8, 2011 at 3:53 am
TomB says:
June 8, 2011 at 8:40 am
And, others… be aware that Sir Arthur redeemed himself with this quote from his famous detective:
At 3:53 AM on 8 June, BBk had replied to my observation that Arthur Conan Doyle – an ophthalmologist – had modeled his Sherlock Holmes character on a demon diagnostician who’d been one of the author’s instructors in medical school with:
…failing to get the blinkin’ point. I was referring not to the character but to the real-life exemplar who had inspired Doyle to create the persona of Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCS, with whom Doyle had done a clinical clerkship during his medical training.
What Dr. Bell had demonstrated to Arthur Conan Doyle (and what every medical doctor can tell you about at least one of his own instructors or preceptors; mine was a sleepy-eyed, slow-talking Oklahoma general practitioner with an eidetic memory, an IQ too high for Mensa, and an inexhaustible supply of “dumb Texan” jokes) is that a painstakingly built and maintained fund of knowledge can provide information sufficient to encountered situations to confer insights not obvious to those who have not the diligence to learn, to remember, and – above all else – to observe the evidence.
Elementary, right?
It seems there are a few babies being thrown out with the bathwater here. There is nothing wrong in principle with deduction, just its misapplication. Consider what I believe to be the most elegant gedanken experiment of the last couple of thousand years as conducted by John Philoponus, Galileo and others.
Aristotle contended that objects fall to the ground at a speed in direct proportion to their weight. An object of X units will fall half as fast as an object 2X units in weight. If we tie the two weights together, then they will fall at a rate of 3 times the speed of the smaller weight since the combined weight is now 3X units. The smaller weight will act as a drag on the larger weight, so they will fall at a rate somewhat less than an object of 2X units in weight. Similarly, the larger weight will drag the smaller weight along faster than it would fall alone.
Obviously, we do not see any object falling at different speeds at the same time; this is an impossibility. Therefore, all objects fall at the same rate regardless of their weight. QED.
Galileo attempted to demonstrate this empirically by having an assistant simultaneously dropping a wooden cannonball and an iron cannonball from a great height. Using the Principle of Exclusion, we can deduce this was not at Pisa else the assistant was some 300 feet tall, or the tower was 300 feet higher at the time than now. The wooden cannonball initially fell faster than the iron cannonball, but the iron cannonball overtook the wooden one and beat it to the ground by a noticeable margin. Galileo managed a fair explanation as to why the empirical evidence failed to support the gedanken experiment.
The important take-home message is that both deduction and induction are important in generating an argument to the best explanation; the best explanation is a value judgement, there being as often as not, several competing explanations for the observed phenomena.
Andy Mayhew says:
June 8, 2011 at 3:12 am
Coldish is correct re the Parallel Roads – they are now believed to be the shorelines of a glacial lake. So Darwin wasn’t too far off the mark.
btw if the warmists were predicting warming for the past 10 years and (some) sceptics predicting cooling over the same time period and we end up with a fairly static temp trend, what does it tell us? Maybe they were both right?
No it tells us that they were both WRONG.
The difference between the two of course is that the warmists were wrong while on the basis of the incorrect claims are enriching themselves, causing the deindustrialization of the first world and leading to starvation in the third world by raising tax and turning food stock into fuel. Whereas those sceptics forecasting cooling were just wrong.
Inductive logic can be expressed in deductive form as per Sir Karl Popper:
If my Theory is correct, then I will make particular observations; I do make those observations. Therefore my Theory is correct.
To see the flaw in this argument form, consider the following:
If Hilary is pregnant, then Hilary is a woman. Hilary is a woman, therefore she is pregnant. This is called affirming the consequent and is a well known fallacy. We have identified the necessary condition, but not the sufficient condition to make our argument sound. This is the problem of all inductive argument. We can never know what we have yet to discover, the so-called black swan problem.
During the Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Dawin made field observations of coral-reefs in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Darwin studied the modern environment and used this information to establish his ideas on the formation of these coral structures.
See The Voyage of the Beagle Chapter 20. Entry dated April 12th
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-voyage-of-the-beagle/chapter-20.html
In religion, I believe this is called “God of the Gaps”: We don’t know what caused it, therefore it must have been God.
Thomas L. Friedman has a piece (of … ) today. Mr. Hot Flat and Crowded claims the Earth is full (of human “vermin”). Didn’t he get the memo that we’re in a population death spiral (this is mathematically assured at this point)? He also must have missed the memo regarding cold and food shortages.
Smokey says:
June 8, 2011 at 10:36 am
The Exclusionary Principle is reflected in the logical fallacy Argumentum ad Ignorantium [argument from ignorance]. It goes something like this: “Since we can’t think of anything else that could cause warming, then it must be due to CO2.”
While I agree with the spirit and conclusions of this article, there seems to be some shifting in the definitions of deductive and inductive and their role in climate science. The exclusion principle is – as Smokey says – closer to Aristotle’s argumentum ad ignrantium than deductiveness. The philosophy of Karl Popper has been cited repeatedly on WUWT in relation to climate science. Popper was clear that deductive science is good, real science, while inductive is non-science and illusory. The present article has it the other way around and I think it has confused the two terms. Essentially the Popperian deductive argument means hypotheses (or “conjectures”) need to be falsifiable and risky – statements that can practically be falsified i they are not true. Willis Eschenbach echoed this in a recent post (a rebuttal to a somewhat inductive Ravetz), stating that a scientific assertion that is true is one that might be false. This is a very elegant expression of Popper’s view.
The big problem with CAGW is that it is inductive. That is to say, assumption is built on assumption in a linear manner such that the whole edifice is obscured and protected from effective falsification. Hence the foundational and sometimes even exclusive role of computer models. Complex inductive theories have the appearence of expaining everything, as did for instance Marxism and dialectic communism in Popper’s time. Popper realised that the supposed strength of such super-theories – they can “explain everything” – was in fact a fatal weakness – they can explain nothing. This led him to his insights on conjectures and refutations, which will eventually be recognised as the foundation of the scientific process. In this respect CAGW is in the same category as dialectic communism and Marxism – an impressive mountain of arguments and data but not falsifiable, not risky and thus not containing any real truth.
The fact of Mankind’s success over the past 10000 years and therefore our development of advanced technology and means to harness energy to do work, are themselves likely a result of the benign, warm interglacial. To think that even our greatest outpourings intentional and non intentional will permanently arrest the glacial is utterly naive.
Sherlock Holmes made a similar mistake. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
Natural variation?
Recently, Dr Roy Spencer, has stated that he has changed his mind about cosmic rays and has put one foot into that camp.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/05/indirect-solar-forcing-of-climate-by-galactic-cosmic-rays-an-observational-estimate/
Tucci 78 ??? preposterous bogosity? What does that mean?
I agree with everything else you have written. My intention was to acknowledge the problems that arise when a new disease entity appears. As you point out, the syndrome of immune deficiency was well recognised (albeit in other contexts) but isolating and identifying the viral cause and developing antiviral treatment combinations took time etc. That was all I was getting at.
Further to my earlier comment.
The assumption underlying use of the exclusion principle in climate science is more comprehensively stated as
‘all the relevant factors and their feedbacks and interactions are known, accurately characterised and quantified’ etc.