How the profiteers who market Thermageddon offend against the principles of formal logic
Guest post by Monckton of Brenchley
LOGIC is the heartbeat of all true learning – the soul of the Classics, the Sciences and Religion. Once everyone studied the Classics, to know that in logic there is a difference between true and false; the Sciences, to discern where it lies; and Religion, to appreciate why it matters. Today, few study all three empires of the mind. Fewer study the ordered beauty of the logic at their heart.
Is Private Fraser’s proposition that “We’re a’ doomed!” logical? I say No. G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe in anything.” The belief that Thermageddon will arise from our altering 1/3000th of the atmosphere in a century is in-your-face illogical, rooted in a dozen fallacies marked out by Aristotle as the commonest in human discourse.
“Consensus” is the New Religion’s central fallacy. Arguing blindly from consensus is the head-count fallacy, the argumentum ad populum. Al-Haytham, founder of the scientific method, wrote: “The seeker after truth does not put his faith in any mere consensus. Instead, he checks.”
Two surveys have purported to show 97% of climate scientists supporting the supposed “consensus”. In both, 97% agreed little more than that the world has warmed since 1950. So what? One involved just 79 scientists, hardly a scientific sample size. Neither was selected to eliminate bias. Neither asked whether manmade global warming was at all likely to prove catastrophic – a question expecting the answer “No.”
Claiming that the “consensus” is one of revered experts is the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appeal to authority. T.H. Huxley said in 1860, “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
Believers talk of a “consensus of evidence”. Yet evidence cannot hold opinions. Besides, there has been no global warming for 18 years; sea level has risen for eight years at just 1.3 in/century; notwithstanding Sandy, hurricane activity is at its least in the 33-year satellite record; ocean heat content is rising four and a half times more slowly than predicted; global sea-ice extent has changed little; Himalayan glaciers have not lost ice; and the U.N.’s 2005 prediction of 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010 was absurd. The evidence does not support catastrophism.
Believers say: “Only if we include a strong warming effect from CO2 can we explain the past 60 years’ warming. We know of no other reason.” This is the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fundamental fallacy of argument from ignorance. Besides, natural variability is reason enough.
They say: “Global warming is accelerating, so we are to blame.” Even if warming were accelerating, this non sequitur is an instance of the argumentum ad causam falsam, the fallacy of arguing from a false cause. They go on to say: “CO2 concentration has risen; warming has occurred; the former caused the latter.” This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc sub-species of the same fallacy.
They say: “What about the cuddly polar bears?” This is the argumentum ad misericordiam, the fallacy of needless pity. There are five times as many polar bears as there were in the 1940s – hardly, as you may think, the profile of a species at imminent threat of extinction. No need to pity the bears, and they are not cuddly.
They say: “We tell the models there will be strong CO2- driven warming. And, yes, the models predict it.” This is the fallacy of arguing in circles, the argumentum ad petitionem principii, where the premise is the conclusion.
They say: “Global warming caused extra-tropical storm Sandy.” This inappropriate argument from the general to the particular is the argumentum a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, the fallacy of accident. Individual extreme events cannot be ascribed to global warming.
They say: “Melting Arctic sea ice is a symptom of global warming.” This unsound argument from the particular to the general is the argumentum a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, the fallacy of converse accident. Arctic sea ice is melting, but the Antarctic has cooled for 30 years and the sea ice there is growing, so the decline in Arctic sea ice does not indicate a global problem.
They say: “Monckton says he’s a member of the House of Lords, but the Clerk says he isn’t, so he’s not credible.” This is the argumentum ad hominem, a shoddy sub- species of ignoratio elenchi, the fundamental red-herring fallacy of ignorance of how a true argument is conducted.
They say: “We don’t care what the truth is. We want more power, tax and regulation. Global warming is our pretext. If you disagree, we will haul you before the International Climate Court.” This is the nastiest of all logical fallacies: the argumentum ad baculum, the argument of force.
These numerous in-your-face illogicalities provoke four questions: Has the Earth warmed as predicted? If not, why not? What if I am wrong? And what if I am right?
Q1. Has the Earth warmed as predicted? In 1990 the IPCC predicted that the world would now be warming at 0.3 Cº/decade, and that by now more than 0.6 Cº warming would have occurred. The outturn was less than half that: just 0.14 Cº/decade and 0.3 Cº in all.
In 2008 leading modellers wrote:
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more, suggesting that an absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the observed warming rate.”
Yet the linear trend on the Hadley/CRU monthly global temperature anomalies for the 18 years 1995-2012 shows no statistically-significant warming, even though the partial pressure of CO2 rose by about a tenth in that time.
The modellers’ own explicit criterion proves their scary predictions exaggerated. Their vaunted “consensus” was wrong. Global warming that was predicted for tomorrow but has not occurred for 18 years until today cannot have caused Sandy or Bopha yesterday, now, can it?
Q2: Why was the “consensus” wrong? Why do the models exaggerate? The climate-sensitivity equation says warming is the product of a forcing and a sensitivity parameter. Three problems: the modellers’ definition of forcing is illogical; their assumptions about the sensitivity parameter are not falsifiable; and their claims that their long-term predictions of doom are reliable are not only empirically disproven but theoretically insupportable.
Modellers define forcing as the net down-minus-up flux of radiation at the tropopause, with surface temperature fixed. Yet forcings change surface temperature. So the definition offends against the fundamental postulate of logic that a proposition and its converse cannot coexist. No surprise, then, that since 1995 the IPCC has had to cut its estimate of the CO2 forcing by 15%. The “consensus” disagrees with itself. Note in passing that the CO2 forcing function is logarithmic: each further molecule causes less warming than those before it. Diminishing returns apply.
Direct warming is little more than 1 Cº per CO2 doubling, well within natural variability. It is not a crisis. So the modellers introduce amplifying or “positive” temperature feedbacks, which, they hope, triple the direct warming from CO2. Yet this dubious hypothesis is not Popper- falsifiable, so it is not logic and not science. Not one of the imagined feedbacks is either empirically measurable or theoretically determinable by any reliable method. As an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, I have justifiably excoriated its net-positive feedbacks as guesswork – uneducated guesswork at that.
For there is a very powerful theoretical reason why the modellers’ guess that feedbacks triple direct warming is erroneous. The closed-loop feedback gain implicit in the IPCC’s climate-sensitivity interval 3.3[2.0, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling falls on the interval 0.62[0.42, 0.74]. However, process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is far too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification function.
At high gain, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling. Yet for 64 million years the Earth’s surface temperature has fluctuated by only 3%, or 8 Cº, either side of the long- run mean. These fluctuations can give us an ice-planet at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next, but they are altogether inconsistent with a loop gain anywhere near as close to the singularity as modellers’ estimates imply.
Surface temperature changes little, for homoeostatic conditions prevail. The atmosphere’s lower bound, the ocean, is a vast heat-sink 1100 times denser than the air: one reason why 3000 bathythermographs deployed in 2006 have detected no significant ocean warming. The atmosphere’s upper bound is outer space, to which any excess heat radiates harmlessly away. Homoeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get. Thus the climatic loop gain cannot much exceed zero, so the warming at CO2 doubling will be a harmless 1 Cº.
Yet the overriding difficulty in trying to model the climate is that it behaves as a chaotic object. We can never measure the values of its millions of defining parameters at any chosen moment to a sufficient precision to permit reliable projection of the bifurcations, or Sandy-like departures from an apparently steady state, that are inherent in the evolution of all objects that behave chaotically. Therefore, reliable, very-long-term modelling of future climate states is unattainable a priori.
The IPCC tries to overcome this actually insuperable Lorenz constraint on modelling by estimating climate sensitivity via a probability-density function. Yet PDFs require more, not less, information than simple estimates flanked by error-whiskers, and are still less likely to be reliable. The modellers are guessing. Their guesses have been proven wrong. Yet they continue to demand our acquiescence in an imagined (and imaginary) consensus.
Q3: What if I am wrong? If so, we must travel from physics to economics. Pretend, ad argumentum, that the IPCC’s central estimate of 2.8 Cº warming by 2100 is true, and that Stern was right to say that the cost of failing to prevent warming of that order this century will be about 1.5% of GDP. Then, at the minimum 5% market inter-temporal discount rate, the cost of trying to abate this decade’s predicted warming of 0.15 Cº by typical CO2-mitigation schemes as cost-ineffective as Australia’s carbon tax would be 48 times greater than the cost of later adaptation. At a zero discount rate, the cost of acting now exceeds that of adapting in the future 36 times over.
How so? Australia emits just 1.2% of Man’s CO2, of which Ms. Gillard aims to cut 5% this decade, abating 0.06% of global emissions by 2020. Then CO2 concentration will fall from a predicted 410 μatm to 409.988 μatm. In turn predicted temperature will fall by 0.00006 Cº. But the cost will be $130 billion ($2 quadrillion/Cº). Abating the
0.15 Cº warming predicted for this decade would thus cost $317 trillion, or $45,000/head worldwide, or 59% of global GDP. Mitigation measures inexpensive enough to be affordable will thus be ineffective: measures expensive enough to be effective will be unaffordable. Since the premium vastly exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure. That is a precautionary principle worthy of the name.
Q4: What if I am right? When I am proven right, the Climate Change Department will be swept away; Britain’s annual deficit will fall by a fifth; the bat-blatting, bird- blending windmills that scar our green and pleasant land will go; the world will refocus on real environmental problems like deforestation on land, overfishing at sea and pollution of the air; the U.N.’s ambition to turn itself into a grim, global dictatorship with overriding powers of taxation and economic and environmental intervention will be thwarted; and the aim of science to supplant true religion as the world’s new, dismal, cheerless credo will be deservedly, decisively, definitively defeated.
Any who say “I believe” are not scientists, for true scientists say “I wonder”. We require – nay, we demand – more awe and greater curiosity from our scientists, and less political “correctness” and co-ordinated credulity.
To the global classe politique, the placemen, bureaucrats, academics, scientists, journalists and enviros who have profiteered at our expense by peddling Thermageddon, I say this. The science is in; the truth is out; Al Gore is through; the game is up; and the scare is over.
To those scientists who aim to end the Age of Reason and Enlightenment, I say this. Logic stands implacable in your path. We will never let you have your new Dark Age.
To men of goodwill, lovers of logic, I say this. It is our faculty of reason, the greatest of the soul’s three powers, that marks us out from the beasts and brings us closest in likeness to our Creator, the Lord of Life and Light. We will never let the light of Reason be snuffed out.
Do not go gentle to that last goodnight – Rage, rage against the dying of the light!
Gail Combs:
At January 7, 2013 at 9:13 am
I hope I may be counted among your “religious friends”. and I have repeatedly tried to gain acceptance of your point in this and in the previous thread on an article by Lord Monckton.
However, on this and the previous thread there have been atheists who have used promotion of their religion as an excuse to destroy both threads.
Their success on the previous thread has encouraged them in their activity on this thread. And their success on this thread will give them confidence to do it again in future.
I repeat, there is an inhibition on promotion of creationism on WUWT and – for the same reason – there is clear need for similar inhibition on promotion of atheism on WUWT. Otherwise there is severe risk that WUWT could be damaged beyond repair.
Richard
“In the beginning, the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness filled the face of the land.” Sounds a little like the heat death of the Universe, no?
You’re at the wrong end of things and no, it doesn’t really sound like the big bang. Genesis is wrong in every detail, unless, of course, you are willing to twist the words around until they mean whatever they have to mean to correspond to what we have learned by actually looking.
To put it another way, if you were raised in a box and used Genesis as your basis for understanding, you would ab-so-lute-ly never ever ever come to understand what really happened. The wrong events, the wrong order, not a single thing like what really happened. Instead of reading a book that is a hodge-podge of oft-rewritten Sumerian myths crudely stitched together by multiple authors in a resource constrained violent culture, from a time some 2600 years ago when humanity was savage and ignorant and had only relatively recently learned to use bronze and iron, in an effort to find a secret decoder that reveals that they really understood things like the big band, nucleosynthesis, the great dark, formation of the original stars and galaxies, the evolution of type I, II, and III stars, the supernovae of type I and II stars that produced the metals, the stardust, that eventually evolved, on a small lump coalesced around an unremarkable second or third generation star, us, in a truly enormous visible Universe where (as it looks like it is going to turn out) nearly all such stars have planets and in all probability a staggering number of them have similarly evolved lifeforms, why not take an actual course in Astronomy and learn what really happened in unambiguous terms, no secret decoder ring needed.
You can at the same time learn a little bit about how and why we believe it happened, starting with the discoveries and inventions of physics and general science, the use of parallax to determine the distances to the nearest stars, the use of the principles of thermodynamics and quantum electromagnetic radiation to determine the size and temperature and spectral composition of those stars, the discovery of regularities relating the spectrum and intensity of the stars to their size and distance, so that we could extend the ruler of parallax and begin to learn how truly vast the Universe really is.
None of this is in the Bible. Not even in metaphor. It is silly to pretend that it is. It is one of the many ways we know the Bible could not have been written by God. It has, in actual fact, not stood the test of time, it has been soundly refuted and revealed to be a simple mythology, not a true account, not the sort of thing one would expect to read if the authors (ignorant or not) were truly divinely inspired. It is rife with inconsistencies, filled with horrific acts of amoral violence (perfectly consistent with the savage culture of the day, of course) conducted by supposedly “good” men, laced with rules that ritually require acts of violence to be committed against anyone who dared to think or act freely. It portrays a humanity created perfect but flawed and cast down instead of a humanity that evolved and has never been perfect, inverting the blame for “sin” in order to exculpate God and explain theodicy.
The Bible is not evil. It is not good. It is a part of our history, our past, our moral evolution. But it is high time to stop pretending that it is true, or that it does a particularly good job of laying out valid moral precepts for living. The New Testament does a much better job than the Old in that regard, but is still obviously flawed, and other religions do it at least as well if not better (and that doesn’t make them correct as in true either!)
But believe me, I am perfectly happy to deconstruct Genesis, a line at a time if you like. There is not one, single word in Genesis that is likely to be true without twisting its words far, far away from their actual meaning, and I refuse to accept that a loving God would right an important document like this deliberately wrong so that one has to twist its words to get it to work out right. That makes no sense at all.
rgb
Congratulations to everyone for an exceptional discussion. As usual, some replies to commenters.
J. Ferguson wonders why he had not previously seen the statement “Once everyone studied the Classics, to know that in logic there is a difference between true and false; the Sciences, to discern where it lies; and Religion, to appreciate why it matters. Today, few study all three empires of the mind. Fewer study the ordered beauty of the logic at their heart.” Well, I had not written it before. I’m glad he likes it.
“Old fossil” regrets that I had not included the “straw man” fallacy in the list of logical solecisms perpetrated by the usual suspects. In fact I had: the argumentum ad ignorationem elenchi, the fundamental fallacy of introducing irrelevancies and hence demonstrating one’s ignorance of the method of conducting a rational argument, encompasses a number of sub-fallacies, each related to a distinct category of irrelevance. The straw man fallacy is one of these: others are the argumentum ad hominem and the red-herring fallacy.
Mr. Cripwell worries about my having said there might be 1 K warming in response to a CO2 doubling. Well, I went to see the Professor who had done the original, meticulous, spectral-line-by-spectral-line calculations (some 10,000 of them) to determine the expected response. His conclusion was that the CO2 forcing is unquestionably logarithmic, so that each additional molecule we emit has less forcing and warming effect than its predecessors; that the precise value of the coefficient in the CO2 forcing function, which the IPCC has already reduced by 15%, cannot be determined; and that, all things considered, 1 K per doubling was probably in the right ball-park. Of course, non-radiative transports greatly complicate the picture, and Mr. Cripwell may be right in suggesting that the final response will be less than 1 K. But we are on stronger ground if we argue against the models’ near-tripling of this direct warming by imagined (and probably imaginary) net-positive temperature feedbacks. Remove that multiplication by 3 and the climate crisis vanishes.
Richard Courtney rightly reminds us that the models’ assumption that the aerosol forcing is strongly negative introduces a fudge-factor that has the effect of artificially increasing climate sensitivity.
Mr. Hoffer growls at my “justifying science on the basis of religion”. Merely to mention religion in passing, in what was originally a speech for an audience that would be able to appreciate the context, is not the same thing as “justifying science on the basis of religion”.
Mr. Armstrong and many others make similar points. He says Trinitarianism is illogical. This is to misunderstand the sphere of logic, which is concerned first of all with the internal consistency and hence validity of an argument. In any valid argument where the premises are true, the conclusion will also be true. Trinitarianism is a belief – and one that cannot be Popper-falsified. On the other hand, the New Religion of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarm (CACA) is in truth a superstition – a system of belief that is falsifiable and has been demonstrated to be false. The phrase “New Religion” comes from the Catholic writings about the English Reformation.
Mr. Anton says animals can reason too, and seems to imagine that Christianity allows us to treat animals with contempt and cruelty. He may like to read up on St. Francis of Assisi. I am no expert on the extent to which animals can reason, but it is probable – on present knowledge – that their capacity to reason is not as great as ours. That was the point I was making.
Lazy Teenager, who as usual fails to read the head posting with due care and attention, says the consensus in support of the New Religion is not a “consensus of scientists” but a “consensus of evidence”. The moderator wondered, rightly, how insentient items of data are capable of forming a “consensus” – a point that I had made in the head posting, together with a summary of some of the growing body evidence that points away from CACA.
Mr. Abbot says it was illogical of me to say that CACA was illogical on the basis that we shall only succeed in altering 1/3000 of the atmosphere this century. But that was not the basis on which I said that CACA was illogical. I said it was illogical in that a surprisingly large proportion of the arguments most often advanced in its favour are instances of the dozen commonest fallacies in human discourse, as codified by Aristotle in his Refutations of the Sophists 2350 years ago.
Professor Brown grumbles that the fallacious arguments I described are “based on fancy Latin phrases”. No, they are based on the writings of Aristotle, following Plato, following Socrates, and they have been much polished by scholars since then, including the medieval schoolmen who gave them their Latin names. Latin is useful in that in a few words it can convey a precise meaning. That is why the terms I used for the fallacies are still in daily use today in universities throughout the world (though not, perhaps, at Duke).
The Professor also says atheism is not a religion. Well, in the sense that it is a system of belief that is not capable of Popper-falsification, that is exactly what it is.
Mr. House, as usual, has nothing but a scatter-gun full of whining spite to offer. He wails that in a previous posting I had said there had been no global warming for 16 years, and now, less than a month later, it has gone up to 18 years. Well, Werner Brozek did the math and concluded that the HadCRUt3 dataset, relied upon by the IPCC in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, shows no global warming for 19 years. The newer HadCRUt4 database makes it 18 years, so I chose the more cautious figure. However, on the RSS satellite dataset, the global warming of the past 23 years is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
Mr. House says I should surely not want to talk about my membership of the House of Lords. I had mentioned the subject in passing as an indication of precisely the sense in which Mr. House now mentions it – as an instance of the logical fallacy that is the argumentum ad hominem. Those who, like Mr. House, have no understanding of logic tend to assume that relentless attacks on the person of people like me will undermine our credibility. However, in logic it is the quality of the argument that wins the day, not the question whether the protagonist is or is not a member of the House of Lords. In any event, in a previous posting, Anthony provided a link to the written Opinion of learned Counsel to the effect that I am a member of the Lords, and that I am fully entitled to say so. So perhaps Mr. House can try to learn a little science rather than expatiating with malevolent ignorance on everything from the least-squares linear-regression trend on monthly temperature anomaly datasets to the arcana of United Kingdom peerage law.
For me the reconciliation of our legacy religions and the ongoing pursuit of quantitative understanding of , as an erstwhile hindu friend used to ask , “What is Happening?” ( often late at places like The Tunnel in NYC , I must admit ) comes from modernizing the definition of god . I think this mathematical pursuit is the modern form of humanity’s religious impulse . But rather than going to war over whether there are 0 , 1 , or 2 messiahs attached to THE single Abrahamic jealous ( Rule #1 : “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” ) god , science , like some of the more pantheist “religions” of the orient revere an ever increasing pantheon of Promethei accreting our collective knowledge . I consider the quests of Maxwell or Gauss or Einstein as religious as those of Kepler or Newton .
To me the greatest ancient theologian was Pythagoras . ( My favorite 20th century one , Vonnegut . ) He actually abstracted one of the most profound relationships of existence : squares sum . His cult also was unique in disproving one of their founding beliefs : that all numbers can be expressed as ratios .
It happens I just finished my End of 2012 Newsletter , http://cosy.com/y12/NewsLetter201212.html , which , of greatest relevance here , presents a simple computation showing that for Venus’s surface temperature to be 2.25 times the graybody temperature in its orbit without an internal heat source , it must be 10 times more reflective in its longwave spectrum than aluminum foil . That is , its surface temperature cannot be explained as a “runaway Greenhouse Effect” .
It also happens that I offer , as a piece of my art , my Proposed Banner of the NeoPythagoreans on the product of one’s choice .
rgbatduke says:
“The Bible is not evil. It is not good.”
Wrong. The Ten Commandments and other Western moral imperatives are entirely good for society. The decline of the West can be attributed in very large part to the decline in morality, and to situational ethics — the moral equivalent of Post Normal Science.
Children are infinitely better off if they are immersed in Western morals, which stem directly from Judeo-Christian ethics. It doesn’t matter if you are atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jewish or Creationist. Your children will become better adults if they have a good moral upbringing. It doesn’t matter what they decide to believe as adults, or not believe. Being taught morality at a young age is entirely beneficial to society and to the individual.
The logical case against climate panic
Guest post by Monckton of Brenchley
“To those scientists who aim to end the Age of Reason and Enlightenment, I say this. Logic stands implacable in your path. We will never let you have your new Dark Age.”
It is a pleasure not only to my soul but also obviously to many conscious connected souls listen to the words of logic, greek named logos, of Lord Monckton of Brenchley.
Detecting fallacies is fun for the conscious soul, a war conditioned mind not ever recognizes.
“Take the fraction 16/64. Now, canceling a six on top and a six on the bottom, we get that 16/64 = 1/4.” – “Wait a second! You can’t just cancel the six!” – “Oh, so you’re telling us 16/64 is not equal to 1/4, are you?”
“I did not murder my mother and father with an axe! Please don’t find me guilty; I’m suffering enough through being an orphan.”
“All I’m saying is that thousands of people believe in pyramid power, so there must be something to it.”
“The Soviet Union collapsed after instituting state atheism. Therefore we must avoid atheism for the same reasons.”
“Humans are just animals, so we should not concern ourselves with justice; we should just obey the law of the jungle.”
“Johannes Kepler was an astrologer. Astrology is a pseudoscience that has not demonstrated its effectiveness in controlled studies and has no scientific validity. So his three ideas about ‘The laws of the stars’ cannot have any scientific validity.”
“The work of this physician from Russia cannot have any value, he is a communist.” (McCarthy era)
“ In 1893 the Royal Academy of Sciences were convinced by Ball that communication with Mars was a physical impossibility. The Observatory in 1893 noted “Another utterance of Sir Robert Ball has been going the rounds of the newspapers, to the effect that a flag the size of Ireland, if waved, could be seen from Mars with a good telescope.”
“The ‘‘temperature tracking’’ was implemented through a simple proportional control equation, of the form E(t) = pk(deltaT^DATA(t) – delta T(t)) where E(t) are CO₂ emissions, and deltaT^DATA (t) – delta T(t) is the error between prescribed and simulated temperature change at a specific time, t. The proportionality constant pk includes factors converting temperature to CO₂ concentrations (CO₂ concentration divided by climate sensitivity) and CO₂ concentrations to emissions.” (edited by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber)
The other side of the fun is that power people are only interested in victory and preservation of power if not even fixed in the nonlinearity of argumentum, which were well known by the people of Sumer. ‘Let what’s mine stay unused; but let me use what is yours – this will hardly endear a man to his friend’s household’. – ‘You don’t tell me what you have found; you only tell what you have lost.’ – ‘Tell a lie; then if you tell the truth it will be deemed a lie.’ –‘The traveller from distant places is a perenial liar’ (Edmund Gordan).
The last proverb can be expanded to ‘the traveller from distant ideas’.
To this mind traps the saying of Parmenides can be helpful ‘It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not.’ Authorities often make use of this fallacy if they deny alternatives instead of keeping silent if there is no own knowledge about the unknown. The problem occurs that nothing is not falsifiable; you only have the authority’s saying and an authority in an xyz discipline.
There is not really an authority in philosophy because logic is not to be owned like a car or a clock. But this gives the living basis to speak on logic and climate panic untouched by well running fallacies.
Thank you.
V.
I repeat, there is an inhibition on promotion of creationism on WUWT and – for the same reason – there is clear need for similar inhibition on promotion of atheism on WUWT. Otherwise there is severe risk that WUWT could be damaged beyond repair.
Why? I think you worry far too much. Threads peter out anyway, and if they extend out as an OT discussion, what is harmed?
Besides, the problem here is simple. Leave out the promotion of Christianity in a science article in the first place. I could care less if Monckton believes devoutly in Jesus, but if he wraps an entire article in a religious frame and pops it out filled with sanctimonious crap an ironically accusing scientists of being “religious” as his main theme, I’m certainly going to comment on it, just as I would if I were refereeing a physics paper and the same thing occurred.
I’m perfectly happy to leave religious discussion out of WUWT threads entirely, but one of my areas of expertise is epistemology, and discussions there are entirely relevant to science and knowledge. Religion by your own admission lies outside of legitimate epistemology, and hence has no place in a rational discussion. As for “promoting atheism”, science is atheistic. If you think about it, it has to be. Otherwise we’d end up having to preface every scientific prediction with “Inshallah”, God willing. God willing, class, the ball will fall when I release it. Every law, every rule we infer, all of our logic and reason become hostage to the whim of an unknown entity that can decide at any moment to override them. Every conclusion can be twisted into “proof” for one religion or another, as my previous reply addressed. This isn’t imaginary, it happens all the time. It is part of the cognitive dissonance required in order to believe in a scriptural theology and science at the same time.
The only sane thing to do is follow the suggestion of the Buddha and leave God out of it! Period. Does good or evil depend on whether or not God exists? Are the laws of physical science optional? The point Buddha made is that it does not matter how you answer the God question, the problem you face is the same. God or no God, living a compassionate life is better than the alternatives, in ways one can readily observe, which is why this is is a common moral principle of all religions and no religion at all. If God exists, can God make this untrue? If the laws of physical science and the rules we use to infer them are whimsical and arbitrary, we are then incapable of any sort of real knowledge and might as well give up on epistemology altogether, as any understanding we ever gain can be trumped at will by willful supernatural magic. Fortunately, we never see them broken. So again, presuming that they remain unbroken, God or no God, what exactly is the difference?
So, if you (or Mr. Monckton) want to twist the OT around so that Genesis doesn’t disagree with scientific observation, or believe in a version of an Abrahamic religion that treats it as poetry and metaphor and not fact, I could care less, as long as you don’t try to replace our valid epistemological, religion-neutral truths with the twisted exegetic stuff or metaphoric extrapolations and use it as the basis of political or scientific decisioning or dedicate your work to Jesus or preface your conclusions with Inshallah! What you choose to do and why is up to you, but don’t impose that choice on me or anyone else that believes differently.
And please, leave it out of discussions that already are all about science and politics and “religious” thinking (as a bad thing). The irony is overwhelming. As I will not hesitate to point out when it occurs, unless or until Anthony requests otherwise. I’m the grandson of a preacher and was born to be a preacher myself, and as you may have noticed am just naturally argumentative. I will not let proselytizing in science articles pass without protest.
rgb
Monckton of Brenchley says:
January 7, 2013 at 10:02 am
“The Professor also says atheism is not a religion. Well, in the sense that it is a system of belief that is not capable of Popper-falsification, that is exactly what it is.”
Well your usual logical approach has broken down on this occasion I am afraid.
Not believing in a stated fact is a religion is it? When did that happen? Or does it only apply to certain categories of unbelievable facts?
Are not believing in fairies and ghosts religions also? How about cold fusion?
What about a member of the Christian religion who doesn’t believe in the gods of other religions? Are they now following numerous religions, one for each of the other gods he doesn’t believe in, as well as the religion of the god he does believe in?
I am afraid this is a total logical fail.
Alan
Monckton of Brenchley:
Thankyou for your post at January 7, 2013 at 10:02 am and its mention of my post at January 6, 2013 at 10:49 am. Your mention says
Indeed, my post does do that, but its major point is more important.
My post explained that each model emulates a unique climate system which differs from the unique climate system of each other model.
This uniqueness derives from each model using a different value of climate sensitivity from every other model. The assumed aerosol forcing is also unique for each model and ‘fudges’ each model to hindcast global temperature during the past century. As I said
So, every climate model emulates a different climate system from that of every other model. Hence, at most only one of the climate models emulates the climate system of the real Earth because the Earth has only one climate system.
As you say, implicit in this is that “the aerosol forcing is strongly negative introduces a fudge-factor that has the effect of artificially increasing climate sensitivity”. And I now add that those values of climate sensitivity are all much higher than the empirical values obtained by
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satelite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
These completely independent empirical estimates each indicates a climate sensitivity equivalent to ~0.4 deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Richard
I tend to agree (because I’ve read most of the backing articles) but the lack of references for each point suggests BS to the undecided.
John Whitman says:
January 6, 2013 at 3:15 pm
Christopher Monckton, In an earlier comment to you on this thread I addressed almost total agreement on the secular part of your post. Your secular focused discourse was eloquent. The religious (supernatural) focused part of your post lacks internally consistent logic and it misidentifies the metaphysical/epistemological status of supernaturalism. However, your most self-refuting aspect of your religious statement is that it is merely irrelevant to professional and objective scientific pursuit and achievement, per se.
Sorry, but that is not a valid argument, because you have not given any (scientific) reason for your statement. If one speaks on logic he knows that logic cannot be more than the prepositions say. If one speaks about absolute truth, what is the reference for it? From where do know that something is absolutely true (or false)? Can you give a proof what is supernatural? Can you show truth?
Basic logic tells that there is one nature; two natures cannot exist because they must contradict each other. Things cannot be true and false at the same time und not natural and supernatural at the same time. It is a fallacy.
Science is science because of the acknowledgement to that what is to be recognised as true.
V.
richardscourtney says:
January 6, 2013 at 10:49 am
“The input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling is needed because the model ‘ran hot’; i.e. it showed an amount and a rate of global warming which was greater than was observed over the twentieth century. ”
Richard, my reading of the history of the Models was that until Hansen(?) added a Climate Sensitivity “multiplier” they all ran cold, then a Venusian planetary scientist came up with the idea of a CS fudge factor.
I would love to know if this myth can be confirmed from another source.
@richardscourtney
Re: How to do something to provide answers instead of endless incomprehensible ping pong.
I appreciate you asking if I have any ideas, but in the age of the NET it is almost certain that there are many ideas, some of which would be workable if only there was a way to capture them. That then is the first idea – if there is a desire to deal with this problem then some acknowledged climate sceptic blog host would need to host the question and process the results. It is probably an innovative step that has not been done before, and probably a co-operation between several blog hosts. Most climate sceptic blogs link to each other and reference each other’s stories. The hosts also appear in person on WUWT TV. There is a huge synergy here but it is a bit incestuous.
As others have commented, the answers are “in the blogs”, but how does anyone find the answers without trolling through so much material? How does the ‘man in the street’ even know there are blogs dealing with these issues in a non-alarmist way let alone access them?
Initially I personally stumbled on one of these blogs, and after a period of weighing the content with the MSM, I started looking at their linked blogs, and it helped me such a lot.
In the great council of climate sceptics, I am sure there is a will to help the public to get visibility of the flip side of AGW but it needs a skilled media team rather than a science team. Instead of winning a war by drips, it would be good to see a decisive action to break through the BBC propaganda machine.
Let me create an example. Let’s say I am troubled by the Antarctic ice melt. Attenborough flies around with an expert showing that the ice that holds back the glaciers is cracking up and that there is a potential world wide disaster looming if one of these big ice chucks then breaks off. How can I know how much of this is true? Where can I find an answer to satisfy my curiosity and anxiety? I have my own job to do and no time to do deep studies in climate theory, any in any case even the experts can’t agree on much.
In the footsteps of Luther and Tyndale, don’t you think it is time to break the same religious tyranny that prevented people reading the Bible in their own language, and let the people today understand this science in their own language too.
Wrong. The Ten Commandments and other Western moral imperatives are entirely good for society. The decline of the West can be attributed in very large part to the decline in morality, and to situational ethics — the moral equivalent of Post Normal Science.
Fine. Lemme go find some really big stones, then, because my neighbors violate the Sabbath all the time — well, at least one of the days that might or might not be “the Sabbath” as there is some disagreement as to what the right day is. So I might have to kill ’em on more than one day.
My kids are such toast, too. Time to bludgeon them to death with rocks.
Maybe I’ll just enslave my neighbors, come to think about it. Then I can beat them almost to death and stay within the Bible’s very generous rules there. And believe me, I could go on. Marriage by rape, anyone? Suppression of any pretence of religious freedom? This is “entirely good”?
As for the myth of the “decline of the West” — do we live on the same planet? Let’s see, the world has never in recorded history been:
a) More peaceful, especially in the West. Most of the conflicts that remain have religious roots, well fed and watered by those that want to exploit them for political power.
b) Richer worldwide. There is a remarkable report here:
http://www.globalissues.org/article/4/poverty-around-the-world
that is still fairly recent that documents the steady decline in global poverty (as well as the many problems with social justice, equality, and freedom.
c) Freer. Human rights are far from universal, and individuals who believe that religious mandates trump individual rights are plentiful and all too often in power, attempting to actually institute the horror that is Old Testament law, literally applied, but fortunately “the West” remains steadfastly in favor of heresy and an individual’s right to choose what to believe (including the choice to believe nothing at all) and the individual’s right to not have their moral behavior dictated in law and enforced by threat of violence by a set of religious rules with which they do not agree.
d) More equal. The treatment of women as chattel and second-class citizens persists around the world, primarily in countries that still hew to the Old Testament standards or the standards of other religions with similar intrinsic inequality embedded in the scriptural ideals. In the “decadent” West, however, women have never been more equal and their rights have never been better protected. Similarly, racial inequality and discrimination, while far from gone from the world including the West, is rapidly disappearing from the West at least where social and religious factors aren’t a perpetual irritant.
e) More knowledgeable. We know more today about the way the Universe works and is put together than ever before. This knowledge enables us to solve problems that previous generations thought were unsolvable. Every day discoveries are made that extend human life, improve human health, increase human wealth, promote human happiness, enrich human lives. Without supernatural intervention or miracles, in an epistemological framework that does not rely on authority or faith.
We have never lived in such comfort, with so much security, so many protections legal and civil, with so many rights, with so much free access to knowledge and opportunity. It is better to be born into the world right now, today, than at any time in the history or prehistory of the human race. Calling this some sort of moral decay insults the meaning of the term, and besides, it is demonstrably, quantitatively, false.
We have a long way to go, both in the West and elsewhere. Until the world accepts the principle of freedom from religion, recognizes that it is unethical to impose one’s own religious beliefs or rules on others or to restrict apostasy in any way to prevent one from freely changing one’s mind, we will be plagued by all of the religions seeking to impose their own version of Sharia, religious law, for better or worse. In the West, the remaining restrictions of this sort are usually fairly benign, moderated by our constitution and its emulation elsewhere (although there are glaring exceptions). In Islamic countries, this is an enormous obstacle to peace and equality and freedom. It is a nontrivial problem in other cultures with other religions, each claiming that an antique document is a better guide for moral behavior than mere common sense and the application of simple principle of personal freedom as long as it doesn’t materially hurt others.
I must this in all sincerity protest your assertion that the West is “in decline”. Compared to what? The West, like the entire world, is continuing the greatest period of ascendence that begin with the Enlightenment. We still struggle with the demons of our moral and physical evolution, and the job is far from finished, but there is more hope of continued progress than ever before as well.
rgb
Monckton of Brenchley says:
January 7, 2013 at 10:02 am
The Professor also says atheism is not a religion. Well, in the sense that it is a system of belief that is not capable of Popper-falsification, that is exactly what it is.
– – – – – – – – – –
Christopher Monckton,
Of course in the theological (theology being the field studying the profound belief in supernaturalism and superstition) terminology both theist and atheist endorsed belief/faith as an essential epistemology/metaphysically process. That is the way with the profound belief in the supernatural / superstition that religion is. Both terms are rigged to a dependence on belief/faith But, step outside that biased, or ”supernatural / superstitious’ paradigm.
When you take that step, then I think rgbatduke is correct. When a one has naturally achieved, by one’s natural capacity of reason, a metaphysical/epistemological system that has determined that to live a life of reason then one by necessity must exclusively exercise one’s natural free volition to exclusively use man’s natural capacity for reason exclusively on the natural world then one does not even reject religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism . . . one then has achieved the capability to say religion’s supernaturalism and superstitionism is irrelevant to their metaphysical / epistemological system. Aristotle came reasonably close, but not completely. We stand on his mighty shoulders. : )
I am very happy that in your last two posts you have stimulated an important dialog on a large stage that can philosophically compare science to religion’s supernaturalism/superstitioinism. I look forward to your next post that will again tee up this excellent philosophical contrast between science and religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism. Thank you.
NOTE: Next step one can show that one’s ethics and morality as a reasoning being are a natural logical extension of one’s natural knowledge of oneself. One does not depend on the acceptance of religion’s supernaturalist / superstitionist based morals and ethics. Likewise for politics and aesthetics.
John
I am afraid this is a total logical fail.
Well said. I said it too (somewhat less concisely:-) but Mr. Monckton obviously has prior beliefs that he is willing to bend the usual rules to defend.
As I pointed out, a person who fails to believe in N-1 out of N religions is only 1/N less of an atheist than I am. Mr. Monckton is, I have little doubt just as much of an atheist regarding Hinduism or Islam as I am, recognizing that they are far from proven, in direct contradiction with all sorts of matters of fact and moral principles that we now take for granted, and hence that it is not reasonable to accord them any particular degree of plausible belief. There only remains for him to take one small (1/N) step and he can reckon the world as it appears to be, not as he was taught when he was too young to know better. Or at least, to take the 1/(2N) step of recognizing that refusal to accept any of the N boxes (or even any reasonable upper bound on N) is hardly a box itself, and recognizing that his choice of of the N boxes is based on (at best!) anecdotal evidence. Literally. From anecdotes thousands of years old.
In the meantime, I plan to continue worshipping the Holy Monopole, even though it has eluded us so far. As a so-far invisible particle that might explain some things we observe if it exists, there is at least as much evidence for its existence as there is for that of God — pretty stories and a few non-reproducible sightings.
rgb
Professor Brown grumbles that the fallacious arguments I described are “based on fancy Latin phrases”.
Not at all, just poking fun. I love a good latin phrase as much as the next guy. That’s why I was participating in the process of making up some new ones, tongue in cheek.
The problem is that a few new fallacies have been discovered over the last few thousand years that have, as far as I know, not been named in latin. I commend to Mr. Monckton what might be the most important fallacy he will ever learn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_projection_fallacy
To quote from Jaynes (from the article):
Once one has grasped the idea, one sees the Mind Projection Fallacy everywhere; what we have been taught as deep wisdom, is stripped of its pretensions and seen to be instead a foolish non sequitur. The error occurs in two complementary forms, which we might indicate thus: (A) (My own imagination) → (Real property of Nature), [or] (B) (My own ignorance) → (Nature is indeterminate).
Religious thinking fits neatly into both. An imagined God becomes a real property of nature, and in order to make room, becomes inevitably a God of the Gaps.
Enjoy.
rgb
MiCro:
At January 7, 2013 at 11:21 am you ask me
Sorry, but I cannot confirm or deny it. But the ‘myth’ seems unlikely, and I explain this as follows.
As you can see from my post at January 6, 2013 at 10:49 am my studies of model performance began in 1999 with my investigation of the Hadley Center GCM. And as I say, it ‘ran hot’ (i.e. it showed an amount and a rate of global warming which was greater than was observed over the twentieth century) so they added the assumed aerosol forcing to compensate for this.
If the CS fudge factor had been added then reducing that fudge would have tuned the model to stop it ‘running hot’.
But that putative fudge was not adopted. Instead, the aerosol cooling was input. This was a reasonable test of the hypothesis that the aerosol was responsible for the ‘running hot’. The test was follows.
The magnitude of the aerosol cooling was not known but the magnitude of ‘running hot’ was observed. Also, the aerosol washes out of the atmosphere within days. Hence, cooling was added to the model in a spatial pattern which matched the emission of anthropogenic aerosol emission, and with a total magnitude which forced the model to emulate global temperature change over the twentieth century.
If the aerosol hypothesis were correct then the global distribution of warming and cooling over the twentieth century would be matched by the model which was adjusted with the aerosol cooling.
But the model gave a very different pattern of temperature changes over the Earth’s surface; for example, the model showed most warming where most cooling had been observed in reality, and the model showed most cooling where most warming had been observed in reality.
This failure of the model was overcome by PR.
A fanfare of publicity was given to the agreement between change to global temperature over twentieth century and the the model’s emulation of that change. But the agreement was fixed as an input to the model by the input of assumed aerosol cooling.
And the following IPCC Report said the model’s good reliability was indicated by its ability to indicate regions of warming and cooling but made no mention of the lack of relationship of those regions to observed reality.
So, this result was a problem because it disproved the aerosol hypothesis and no other reason for the model ‘running hot’ was known and they used PR to misrepresent the failure of the test.
If your “myth” of putative CS input were correct then its adjustment would have been another way to compensate for the model ‘running hot’. That was not done and the risky PR was used to hide the failure of the ‘aerosol hypothesis’ test. Hence, it seems to me that the ‘myth’ is improbable.
I hope that helps.
Richard
One of my professors held a PhD in geophysics and was also a devout Catholic who believed the earth was created just over 5000 years ago. I asked him how he reconciled the two.
He responded by picking up some fossil creature off his desk and said words to the effect of “this fossil was created 5000 years ago as a 20 million year old fossil. If I wanted to know WHY the creator did that, I would have studied theology. But I wanted to know WHAT he created and how all he created fits together, so I instead studied geology. I see no need to reconcile the two”
Then he showed me a single panel comic of two very pissed off hamsters. One says to the other “oh yeah? If there’s no god, who cleans the cage?”
After I stopped laughing he made his point clearer. We cannot reconcile the two, so there is no point even trying. Science is science and religion is religion, there is no need to reconcile them and no value in trying….as this thread ably demonstrates.
rgb@duke says:
“Fine. Lemme go find some really big stones, then, because my neighbors violate the Sabbath all the time… &blah, blah, etc.”
When I wrote my comment, I just knew you would respond with reams of strawman arguments, and that is exactly what you did. You are so predictable. I specifically cited the Ten Commandments. Comment on them if you want any credibility.
I stated that being taught morality [right from wrong] is basically a good thing, both for the child and for society. I stand by that statement, and nothing you wrote deconstructs anything in it. Clearly you don’t agree; that is your problem.
The alternative is to be raised without having morals instilled. That generally leads to a bad end, or at least to adult unhappiness and discontent.
My recommendation: stick to physics.
Bruckner8 says:
January 7, 2013 at 8:24 am
Sorry John, I never said *humans* require belief; I said atheism and theism require belief. Us humans on the agnostic side have neither belief, because, darnit, we just don’t know, lol. You’re convinced there’s no theism, yet you have no proof. If you have no proof, you’re left with belief.
You KNOW there’s no theism…and yet you accuse me of using a priori knowledge. Good one!
– – – – – – – –
Bruckner8,
Hey, thank you for maintaining engagement on the dialog contrasting science and religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism.
If a person does not know something, then a person by reason can simply say so and do their best in that situation, then pursue getting more scientific knowledge. Belief / faith is a choice some make in that situation, but it is not a metaphysically / epistemological requirement that a person must make a belief or have faith.
I think my below comment that I just sent to Christopher Monckton covers your comment.
John
Alan Millar says:
January 7, 2013 at 10:46 am
Not believing in a stated fact is a religion is it? When did that happen? Or does it only apply to certain categories of unbelievable facts?
Are not believing in fairies and ghosts religions also? How about cold fusion?
What about a member of the Christian religion who doesn’t believe in the gods of other religions? Are they now following numerous religions, one for each of the other gods he doesn’t believe in, as well as the religion of the god he does believe in?
I am afraid this is a total logical fail.
Alan
How come you don’t believe? More correct would be: Why do you believe NOT fairies? An agnostic would say “I don’t know. I’ve never observed fairies. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and I have no current means to verify their existence.” (That’s for the peeps who say “Oh yea? Well you’ve never seen Moscow either, so how do you know it exists?”)
This is my entire point on Atheism. The decision of “non-belief” is itself a belief (“I don’t believe.” takes reason, proof). I bet most Atheists are actually Agnostics, but they’ve hitched their wagon so thoroughly to Atheism that they can’t back out now.
Does [any entity] [meet this condition]? Possible answers: Yes, No, I don’t know. Yes and No require proof. (We can talk about the fallacy of proving non-existence too…which will make my point even stronger, since a proof can’t be supplied, yet the “No” people still believe “No.”)
Professor Brown,
In truth I was merely stirring the pot. Asimov made the point decades ago, that what thermodynamics dictates as the end condition of the universe, Genesis accurately describes, although wrong end around as you say, as the beginning. I don’t take anything in the Bible literally except the excellent advice of Jesus.
Keep Big Banging away, someone will get it right eventually. And just for further input, in what way quantitatively is the BB dfferent than, “And God said, let there be light. And there was light?”
BargHumer:
At January 7, 2013 at 11:31 am you ask me
Yes, and within the severe constraints of my limited ability, I try to do that. For example, see my very recent answer above at January 7, 2013 at 12:02 pm in response to a question from MiCro.
Language is not the problem. The problem is how to get information out to as many people as e.g. the BBC misinforms. I don’t know how to solve that.
You say to me
You may be right that the solution is on some sceptic blog(s). If so, then I don’t understand why it has not flowed between the sceptic blogs.
I repeat, I don’t know of a solution. I would act on it if I did.
Richard
– – – – – – – – –
Centers for Disease Control,
Thank you for your comment.
I am not dismissing people who endorse religion’s supernaturalism / superstitionism. It is what it is by their free volitional choices. I am discussing its fundamental aspects and comparing them to the fundamental aspects science.
Also, I think I have fully addressed your comment in the following two comments I just posted. Let me know if I have not fully addressed your thoughts.
John
Who do you think put all the chaos in the universe – vast impersonal forces or something?
It’s got to be Goddess!
Hail Eris!
[A blonde? Mod]