The Unraveling of Global Warming is Accelerating

jorgekafkazar says:
April 19, 2013 at 11:05 am
Tilo Reber says: “The good news is that I’m developing some nice back muscles shoveling all the April snow in Denver.”
Heck, Tilo, it snowed in June when I lived there ~1974. Get used to it. Hum “I’m Dreaming of a White Cinco de Mayo” while you work.
Heh, heh… Jorge, I remember that storm clearly. I was camping in the mountains (Creedmore Lakes) when it occurred. It began snowing in the evening (to our amusement), and by morning I was wearing my collapsed tent under 15 inches of wet stuff. Our group was evacuated by sheriff’s 4wd trucks with all-around tire chains. Quite an adventure. Thanks for the memory!

jc says:
April 19, 2013 at 11:09 am
“I get the impression – here and in other comments – that you are determined to not let yourself be beguiled by false hope, only to be disappointed. Is it possible that, in not believing change is occurring until you see direct evidence of a tangible nature in front of your own two eyes, that you have become a prisoner in your own way – as heretic with no expectations of the mad being sane – of AGW? Understandable if so!”
See, Germans really do listen when I explain the CO2 greenhouse effect to them. Even though they are warmists they don’t know the first thing about it. The reason is that they get all their information from public TV. Unfortunately there is no Fox News-like TV in Germany; our private TV stations concentrate on realitiy TV etc.
Read up on Popper’s concept of fallibility – that everything you believe could be wrong. This concept applies to the German public at large. I do not see a change here. Amazingly people still love the public TV, I never owned one.
So I have a completely different perspective. I have no reason to change. I’m just telling you how it is.
We pay about 8 bn EUR a year for our public media (we are forced to). Per head this is at least 3 times as much as the Brits are forced to fork over to the BBC.
Combine this with the fact that most Germans never read English language news so they trust the gatekeepers, the journos that do the translation and filtering.
What you have is an insular culture with about 100 million people with its very own misconceptions (and granted, in some cases superior concepts).

This is funny! I’ll explain:
Harald Martenstein writes a weekly column in the lifestyle section of Die Zeit. And he does this in the format of satirical causerie.
The blogspot Klimazwiebel picks up on this and concludes (I think correctly so) that Harald is no climate sceptic, but Klimazwiebel hopes that a satire can do more hurt to climate scientists than a criticism in the science part of a magazine and that criticism of climate science has arrived in the “middle of society”. Well, you can hope!
Then notrickszone picks it up after that and in the process declares Die Zeit as the mother of German green weeklies! Die Zeit? Mother of German green weeklies? Wtf? All of a sudden Harald is made to be a “leading lefty journalist”. Nice spin! There are some more exaggerations. And errors. Errors that get propagated (also here). I”ll mention 2:
Original: “ein sehr netter Klimaforscher in sein Institut”
Notrickszone: “scientist at a very nice climate institute“
Should be: “a very nice climate scientist at his institute”
Original: “in Florida gab es Eiszapfen”
Notrickszone: “Florida got covered by icicles”
Should be: “there were icicles in Florida”
And thus Watts declares “The Unraveling of Global Warming is Accelerating” and “somebody in Germany in a position to influence others in the Green movement has started thinking for himself, shrugging off suggestions from a climate scientist that “its all in his head””. Really? Because of one satirical column? Did he read the original column? You know, checking sources and all that…
Meanwhile Lawrence Salomon (over at the financial post) didn’t check how the Magazine name is spelled but declares “German newsmagazine, Der Zeit, joins list of climate skeptics” and “Der Zeit and its top columnist Harald Martenstein, join the list of newly skeptical global warming journalists”. Because of one satirical column! Hilarious! It isn’t an opinion piece, and it isn’t the opinion of Die Zeit.
I guess Harald Martenstein is having a a very good time at the moment and I will definitely look for his column next week to see if he has picked up this worldwide attention in “sceptical” circles.

Arthur Peacock said: “Whatever the problem, the solution never varies.”
A neat variation on the Einstein dictum,
“madness is to go on repeating the same experiment expecting different results.”

This reminds me of how the Berlin Wall fell. If you look at the details of that episode, it all began as an offhand comment at a news conference that people took seriously, then Eastern authorities got caught behind the curve as people thronged to the Wall and began celebrating. Wall guards figured there must have been an authoritative edict and even joined the celebration, and it all went south from there. Hence no shots were fired but there were a lot of red-faced authorities afterwards.
Some commenters above are trying to discount the impact of this but the East Germans who lost the Berlin Wall would tell you that big changes can happen from seemingly small mistakes.

@JC: You can be sure that when the next El Nino happens and surface temperatures spike upward, contrarians will be yelling “natural variability!” while conveniently forgetting they dismissed it now. Count on it.

This is a comment by “Pragmatist” in response to a editorial by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who I like, very much, about the failures to understand economic science:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100024122/debunking-austerity-claims-makes-no-difference-to-europes-monks-and-zealots/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Carlyle’s use of “dismal science” to describe economics does not quite mean what many people using the adjective “dismal” intend today. However, I shall go along with current usage.
Economics, whether applied at the micro or macro level, is an exalted “science”. The leading proponents of its different sects (sorry I meant schools) have the ear of governments just as once astrologers buzzed around monarchs.
Economics is not a science in the sense that Karl Popper would have understood. Indeed, Popper (see “Poverty of Historicism”) was merciless in his damnation of disciplines that claimed the mantle of science in order to obfuscate their shortcomings. Economics is not a science because it does not, for the most part, engage in the hypothetico-deductive process.
Stating that an activity is not a science need not be a condemnation. Rather, it is setting limits on its epistemological prowess. Economics is not a science. Moreover, it is impossible that it could be one because there is little, if any, scope for experiments to test theoretical predictions.
The best economists can do is fourfold. First, observe historical trends and draw deductions (these not being testable.) Second, examine the way people interact as in markets; aspects of this (zero sum games and such like) are testable on real people but not in real markets. Third, construct narrative theories based on observations and on such parts of human interactions as can be tested. Fourth, construct predictive econometric models.
Unfortunately, econometric model predictions are no more testable than climate change predictions and equally controversial. However, just as with climate models, they have their charm: few grasp their inner workings and thus cannot gainsay them; being mathematical in nature they have an aura of precision; and they fit squarely in what lay people regard as “science”.
It is arguable that econometric models used by financial institutions with respect to some of the markets in which they deal bear a share of the blame for recent financial catastrophes; perhaps, more correctly the blame lies with greedy senior management all too readily convinced by the overpaid econometric charlatans they employ.
Continuing the analogy with climate divination there are economic models run on computers which are akin to weather forecast software. Weather forecasting is based on a number of sound physical principles; it is capable of making useful short-term predictions. When these are consistently correct they give confidence in the quality of the assumptions and data encapsulated by the model. Yet, it seems that the mathematical phenomenon of chaos imposes a practical time limit on weather forecasting; it is plausible that a limit would apply to economic models even if their bases were sound.
The UK Treasury Model is an example of “weather forecasting”. How far forward is it trustable, if trustworthy at all? To what extent are attempts to place error bars around predictions justified? – that query arises from deep suspicion of non-frequentist use of probabilities lacking empirical estimates.
So to Reinhart-Rogoff and the University of Massachusetts economists. Where do they fit in the “dismal” picture?
From what has been reported in the press it appears that both teams were working at the observational end of economics. That is helpful because the data-handling errors of the first team were easily exposed. Yet whoever is “correct” in such circumstances has but tenuous claim to prescribe economic policies. They, or those proselytising such analyses, are merely expressing an opinion based on a few historical data points. Doubtless, reputable economists such as those mentioned here would not lay claim to a cause and effect relationship; the best they can do is argue its plausibility.
The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing is that the complexity of economics (also bear in mind that there is not just one consensus view) obscures the paucity of its achievements; its accomplishments should be matched by proportional modesty from those who trumpet the discipline’s worth.
Think on it – schools of economics cannot agree on the conceptual basis of non-barter means of exchange e.g. money. So, why should a ramshackle edifice erected on an uncertain foundation be trusted?