Theories that can be easily tested should have a high degree of consensus among researchers. Those involving chaotic and less testable questions – climate change or economic growth, physiology or financial markets – ought to have a greater level of scientific disagreement. Yet this is hardly the case for climate science. In the Paradox of Consensus, we illustrate that the greater the level of consensus for certain classes of hypotheses (those that are difficult to test) the less truth we should assign to them.
Guest Essay By D. RYAN BRUMBERG and MATTHEW BRUMBERG
The moon is not made of cheese, the earth is not flat, and lightning may strike the same place twice. We believe these claims to be true, yet it is unlikely that most readers have personally confirmed each of them. Because it would be nigh impossible for anyone to verify all they take as true, most individuals arrive at their worldview by following the beliefs of others (often “experts”). While there can be good reason to accept an idea based on its popularity, this consensus heuristic must be used with care. There must be a sufficient number of others who did arrive (and continue to arrive) at the same conclusion through independent verification and testing. When this condition is not met, the results can be catastrophic (recall the Challenger disaster). Instead of independent observers arriving at the same conclusion, we risk an information cascade. This failing goes by many names—argumentum ad populum, groupthink, the “bandwagon effect”—but its function is the same: increasing numbers of people will buy into an idea simply because many others already believe it.
Consensus, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. The more easily testable and verifiable a theory, the less debate we would expect. There is little disagreement, for example, about the sum of one plus one or the average distance of the earth from the sun. But as a question becomes more complex and less testable, we would expect an increasing level of disagreement and a lessening of the consensus—think: the existence of god, the best band since the Beatles, or the grand unified theory of physics. On such topics, independent minds can—and should—differ.
We can use a simple formula to express how an idea’s popularity correlates with its verifiability. Let us introduce the K/C ratio—the ratio of “knowability,” a broad term loosely encapsulating how possible it is to reduce uncertainty about an idea’s correctness, to “consensus,” a measure of the idea’s popularity and general acceptance. Topics that are easily knowable (K ~ 1) should have a high degree of consensus (C ~ 1), whereas those that are impossible to verify (K ~ 0) should have a low degree of consensus (C ~ 0). When the ratio deviates too far from the perfect ratio of 1, either from too much consensus or too little, there is a mispricing of knowledge. Indeed, in cases of extreme deviations from the perfect ratio, additional support for a concept with such a lopsided K/C ratio increasingly subtracts from its potential veracity. This occurs because ideas exist not simply at a single temporal point, but rather evolve over the sweep of time. At the upper reaches of consensus, there is less updating of views to account for new information—so much so that supporters of the status quo tend to suppress new facts and hypothesis. Government agencies deny funding to ‘sham’ scientists, tenure boards dissuade young researchers from pursuing ‘the wrong’ track, and the establishment quashes heretical ideas.
Consider the belief that the sun, moon, and stars circle the earth—a reasonable initial proposition. Yet, as additional facts became available (Copernicus, Brahe, Galileo), the dogmatic believers of the consensus condemned these observations as heresy. A world with a less skewed K/C ratio (lower level of consensus given low knowability) would have advanced to the heliocentric model sooner. Given that we know not the evolutionary stage for any current theory, we arrive thus at the unexpected conclusion that when knowability is low, as the level of consensus increases (without a commensurate increase in knowability), there should be a decrease in the probability assigned to the truth of the matter. While not always clear why the K/C ratio can become highly skewed, one interpretation is that more than just the search for knowledge is at play.
To see how this works in practice, we turn to the evergreen topic of climate change. Notwithstanding the underlying ecological threat of climate change itself, the debate about how to confront human-caused global warming has spawned unprecedented financial, political, and social risks of its own. Entire industries face extinction as the world’s governments seek to impose trillions of dollars of taxes on carbon emissions. The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman approvingly writes that Australian politicians—not to mention public figures through the world—now risk “political suicide” if they deny climate change. But if carbon dioxide turns out not to be the boogey-man that climate scientists have made it out to be, tens of trillions will be wasted in unneeded remediation. Much of the world—billions of humans—will endure a severely diminished quality of life with nothing to show for it. The growth trajectory of the world in the twenty-first century may well depend more on the “truth” of climate change ex ante than ex post.
With climate change, as in many areas of scientific complexity, we can (and do) use models to understand the world. But models have their problems. This is particularly true when dealing with complex, non-linear systems with a multitude of recursive feedback loops, in which small variations produce massive shifts in the long-term outcome. Pioneered by the mathematicians Edward Lorenz and Benoit Mandelbrot, chaos theory helped explain the intractability of certain problems. Readers of pop science will be familiar with the term the “butterfly effect,” in which “the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set[s] off a tornado in Texas.” The earth’s climate is one such dynamic, chaotic system and it is within the whirling, turbulent vortex of unpredictability that the modern climate scientists must tread.
And boldly have they stepped into the breach. The scope of agreement achieved by the world’s climate scientists is breathtaking. To first approximation, around 97% agree that human activity, particularly carbon dioxide emissions, causes global warming. So impressed was the Norwegian Nobel Committee by the work of the Inter-governmental Committee on Climate Change and Al Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” that it awarded them the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. So many great minds cannot possibly be wrong, right?
Yet something nags us about this self-congratulatory consensus. Our intuition is that this narrow distribution of opinions yields a knowability to consensus ratio far removed from the perfect ratio of 1. To reach their conclusions, climate scientists have to (a) uncover the (historical) drivers of climate, (b) project the future path of these inputs and others that may arise, and (c) predict how recursive feedback loops interact over multi-decadal time horizons, all without being able to test their hypotheses against reality. When evaluating the causes of past climate shifts, for example, scientists cannot simply re-run history to test the impact of changing different variables. Similarly, although climate scientists can make testable hypotheses about the future, their short-term predictions have an embarrassing record (think post-Katrina predictions of a massive surge in US hurricanes or the failed attempts to forecast temperature changes for the 2000s), while the debate will be moot by the time we can test their long-term forecasts in the year 2100.
We would, therefore, expect this limit on empirical verifiability to birth widely divergent views on the path, causes, and consequences of earth’s future climate. In other arenas, only after a theory has been empirically verified has the scientific community coalesced around it. Even then, scientists continue to subject such theories to rigorous testing and debate. For example, consider the current state of theoretical physics: quantum physics, loop quantum gravity, string theory, super-symmetry, and M-theory, among others, all vie for acceptance. Albert Einstein’s general relativity itself did not begin to garner widespread support until four years after its publication, when Arthur Eddington verified its predictions during a 1919 solar eclipse. Even so, as illustrated by the rash of headlines in late 2011 announcing the (false) discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos, scientists continue to try to poke holes in Einstein’s theory.
Yet the expectation of a rich debate among scientists about climate change does not reconcile easily with the widely endorsed shibboleth that human activity will warm the globe dramatically and dangerously over the next one hundred years. As climate scientists are themselves fond of repeating, the vast majority have arrived at the exact same conclusions about both past warming and future trends. Any discussion that doubts the fundamental premises of climate change is dismissed by the mainstream media and climate scientists as pseudo-science conducted by quacks or ideologues. Thus, questions about observational biases in the location of temperature stations, changes in the earth’s albedo, the cooling effect of dust particles, shifting ocean cycles, fluctuating solar activity, correlation v. causation of historical warm periods and carbon dioxide, catastrophic model failure caused by chaotic interactions, and innumerable other theories—most of which are presumably wrong—are never properly mooted in the public debate.
In our view, the fact that so many scientists agree so closely about the earth’s warming is, itself, evidence of a lack of evidence for global warming. Does this mean that climate change is not happening? Not necessarily. But it does mean that we should be wary of the meretricious arguments mustered in its defense. When evaluating complex questions—from climate change to economic growth, physiology to financial markets—it is worse than naïve to judge the veracity of an idea merely from the strength of consensus. The condemnation of Galileo Galilei meant one man served a sentence of life imprisonment. His ecumenical accusers at least acknowledged a force greater than science drove their decision. The modern priests of climate change endanger the lives of billions as they wield their fallacy that consensus is truth.
Mods:
At May 1, 2013 at 12:08 am the disruptive troll posting as Stan W. has the gall to say to Dave_Wendt:
But the troll is making far, far too many posts all with no content.
I thought there was a policy about thread-bombing?
Richard
In reply to:
Stan W. says:
April 30, 2013 at 5:53 pm
posts made of ignorance are just sad — please, authors, up your game:
I do not want to appear rude as I fully support an open no holds barred debate of the facts concerning ‘climate’ change and the extreme AGW paradigm. The issue is not any warming but extreme dangerous warming. The extreme AGW paradigm pushers will not participate in a debate as the science does not support the extreme dangerous warming hypothesis. The subject of the debate is to show the 20th century warming is unprecedented (it is not check out the Bond cycles which are also called Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles) and to provide evidence that the 20th century warming is dangerous. i.e. That a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in more than 2C warming (Lindzen and Choi’s top of the atmosphere satellite analysis vs ocean temperature indicates a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C warming.)
I also fully support an open no holds barred debate of the facts concerning CO2 emission programs and ‘green’ energy. The EU is presently in the process of destroying their economies in response to the extreme AGW paradigm with bizarre programs that have killed primary industry and are moving on to brown industry in their countries. As the EU consumers still purchase products that require primary industry inputs and brown industry products their net CO2 emissions have increased (i.e. Including the CO2 inputs to the products and goods that are now manufactured in Asia or the US which they purchase). Ironically (sadly ironically) the wind farms and conversion of food to biofuel is so inefficient that there is almost no net reduction in CO2 emissions, if a complete unbiased energy calculation is done which includes cutting down virgin forest for example to grow food to convert to biofuel. The majority of CO2 emission reduction in the EU region is due to the massive loss of jobs to Asia.
There is no consensus on the AGW ‘science’ as the AWG ‘science’ does not support the extreme AGW paradigm. There is obvious indication the IPCC is a political, agenda driven organization that rigs the report writing to exclude papers and authors that do not support their ‘message’. The extreme AGW paradigm pushers are hiding observations and analysis that indicates a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C warming. An obvious observation to support the assertion that there will be less than 1Cwarming is there was been no warming for the last 16 years. The observations indicate something is fundamentally incorrect with the general circulation models that ‘project’ a warming of 3C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from 0.028% to 0.056% is absurdly high.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-global-LT-vs-UAH-and-RSS.png
The general circulation models that were used to project a warming of 3C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 predicted and require to create the 3C warming, that would be warming of the tropical troposphere at around 8 km above the planet’s surface. The warming at this level in the atmosphere occurs due to a predicted increase in water vapour at this altitude and due to increased CO2 at altitude in the atmosphere. The tropic tropospheric warming at around 8km then warms the tropics by long wave radiation. There is no observed tropospheric warming at 8 km. One of the major physical reasons for the lack of warming is found in Lindzen and Choi (2011) analysis (See link to paper below) that low level cloud cover in the tropics increases or decreases in to resist planetary temperature forcing changes by reflecting more or less sunlight off into space.
This is a link to a review paper that was prepared by EPA’s own scientist that supports the assertion that the research and analysis does not support the extreme AGW paradigm. The EPA buried the report. The EPA and IPCC of course are completely ignoring the data and logic that indicates the majority of the 20th/21st warming was not due to the rise in atmospheric CO2.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf
“Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act”
“I have become increasingly concerned that EPA has itself paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC and the CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation. If they should be found to be incorrect at a later date, however, and EPA is found not to have made a really careful independent review of them before reaching its decisions on endangerment, it appears likely that it is EPA rather than these other groups that may be blamed for any errors. Restricting the source of inputs into the process to these two sources may make EPA’s current task easier but it may come with enormous costs later if they should result in policies that may not be scientifically supportable.
The failings are listed below in decreasing order of importance in my view: (See attached for details.)
1. Lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics (see Section 2.9 for a detailed discussion).
2. Lack of observed constant humidity levels, a very important assumption of all the IPCC models, as CO2levels have risen (see Section 1.7).
3. The most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period 1978-1997, just when the surface station data show a pronounced rise (see Section 2.4). Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis 2009 v
4. The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO (Section 2.4). Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.
5. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility of indirect solar variability (Section 2.5), which if important would again be likely to have the effect of overstating the importance of GHGs/CO2.
6. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility that there may be other significant natural effects on global temperatures that we do not yet understand (Section 2.4). This possibility invalidates their statements that one must assume anthropogenic sources in order to duplicate the temperature record. The 1998 spike in global temperatures is very difficult to explain in any other way (see Section 2.4).
7. Surface global temperature data may have been hopelessly corrupted by the urban heat island effect and other problems which may explain some portion of the warming that would otherwise be attributed to GHGs/CO2. In fact, the Draft TSD refers almost exclusively in Section 5 to surface rather than satellite data.”
“2.9 The Missing Heating in the Tropical Troposphere
Computer models based on the theory of GHG/CO2 warming predict that the troposphere in the tropics should warm faster than the surface in response to increasing CO2 concentrations, because that is where the CO2 greenhouse effect operates. Sun-Cosmic ray warming will warm the troposphere more uniformly. The UN’s IPCC AR4 report includes a set of plots of computer model predicted rate of temperature change from the surface to 30 km altitude and over all latitudes for 5 types of climate forcings as shown below. The Hadley Centre’s real-world plot of radiosonde temperature observations shown below, however, does not show the projected CO2 induced global warming hot-spot at all. The predicted hot-spot is entirely absent from the observational record. This shows that most of the global temperature change cannot be attributed to increasing CO2 concentrations.”
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
“ A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data.”
http://www.johnstonanalytics.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/LindzenChoi2011.235213033.pdf
“On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications by Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000- 2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. An earlier study (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) was subject to significant criticisms. The present paper is an expansion of the earlier paper where the various criticisms are taken into account. … … We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. …. … CO2, a relatively minor greenhouse gas, has increased significantly since the beginning of the industrial age from about 280 ppmv to about 390 ppmv, presumably due mostly to man’s emissions. This is the focus of current concerns. However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1C (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of well mixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5C to 5C and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds. Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth. …”
For Janice. You may think you are fat and ugly but you are NOT because your mind is clear, you care, and you can express yourself probably better then I can. I love many things, my woman person, my dogs and cats (I bet you have some too), the birds on my bird feeder, and life itself.
For Stan W: I notice you have not addressed my comment that I am ashamed you carry the same first name as I do. I also notice you do NOT post under your “real name”. Is your real name a fiction as your comments are?
richardscourtney says:
May 1, 2013 at 1:11 am
I think Stan meant to say too many words over two syllables.
For Anthony: You had best be cautious. Janice and I are hooking up. WUWT is in danger of becoming the eHarmony of climate skeptics.
On another topic: When I misspell something ( as I do frequently) a little red line appears under that word. Oh, joy, a
built in spell checker!!!!!
[the Firefox (Mozilla) web browser does that automatically in all of its text entry screens. Mod]
Stan W seems to share the same tendencies as David Appell. Connection, perhaps?
Dave Wendt:
re your post addressed to me at May 1, 2013 at 1:22 am.
Thankyou! I enjoyed that.
And, of course, you are right. Silly me for not seeing it.
Richard
Martin Clark says:
April 30, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Let’s see if I have this right …
The “97%”.
The original target audience was 10,257 scientists, of whom 3,146 responded, less than a 31% response rate. They narrowed this down to 77 “climate scientists” based on publication history and as you say, 75 from 77 became the 97%. It was disingenuous to then use the “climate scientists” as a new population sample size. The response figure of 3,146 is the figure against which the 75 out of 77 should be compared and in this case we get not 97% but just 2.38%.
As the original number contacted was 10,157 and of those, 69% decided they didn’t want any part of it, the figure of 75 believers should really be set against that number, and then we get a mere 0.73% of the scientists they contacted who agreed with their loaded questions.
However a headline of “0.73% of scientists think that humans are affecting the climate” doesn’t quite have the same ring as 97% does it?
This CNN posting was typical of the Press coverage at the time:
Surveyed scientists agree global warming is real January 19, 2009
“A survey of more than 3,000 scientists found that the vast majority believe humans cause global warming. Against a backdrop of harsh winter weather across much of North America and Europe, the concept of rising global temperatures might seem incongruous.
Human-induced global warming is real, according to a recent U.S. survey based on the opinions of 3,146 scientists. However there remain divisions between climatologists and scientists from other areas of earth sciences as to the extent of human responsibility.
However the results of the investigation conducted at the end of 2008 reveal that vast majority of the Earth scientists surveyed agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.”
As we know, the final result was not based on the opinions of 3,146 scientists, but 77, but what does accuracy matter in the whole scheme of things. It is amazing how often this distortion is repeated, no matter how many times it is refuted.
That struck me also. The 97% consensus was the basis of this article … while that 97% statistic has been completely debunked. Interesting article, anyway.
barry
I think you meant to say:
” there should be some warming with an ever-increasing atmospheric concentration of CO2.” if all other factors remain the same.
TeaPartyGeezer,
I like you.
Jeff Alberts says:
April 30, 2013 at 8:27 pm
Readers of pop science will be familiar with the term the “butterfly effect,” in which “the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set[s] off a tornado in Texas.”
“Very poor analogy, and not even close to being true. The microscopic turbulence caused by the butterfly’s wings are quickly dispersed and overwhelmed by normal breezes. Even on a dead calm day that butterfly can’t make a whit of difference in even it’s local weather patterns. Consider all the things that move through the air every second of every day that are multiple orders of magnitude larger and more turbulent than a butterfly’s wings. Even they have zero effect..”
I don’t disagree, however I think the “butterfly effect” can affect models as they are closed systems and all parts mathematically interconnected and driven. As the world is not a mathematically construct but can mostly be described mathematically I would have thought Newton’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd laws describe what should happen based on the mass of the butterfly, which is not much, other than the butterfly gets airborne with minimal effort. If more than that happens then we are into alchemy, perpetual motion and all sorts of wishful thinking.
Besides models, one other area where the butterfly effect may exist is human thinking and actions. One small idea or action can indeed propagate with few words and negligible exertion.
Stan W. :
Relax, have a beer or sip some vin, the world is not going to warm anymore, that is over, unfortunately for us because a warmer world is a better world: 1. Milder winters; 2. higher humidities, longer growing seasons; 3. expansion of arable land; 4. more food for a growing population and less hunger; 5. shinkage of deserts.
CO2 is a beneficial gas, the basis of life, and a plant fertilizer; crop yields have increased because of increasing CO2.
Don’t be like the poor dummies who swallow the panic mongering and pee a puddle over something that they don’t understand.
Best Regards, mpainter
Consensus means “general agreement”. It is a social phenomenon.
Science is not a matter of consensus but of founded reasoning based on experimentation and observation. In science any contradictory evidence will put in question an established theory.
The post of Messr. Brumberg tells us that the more is known on a subject in detail and from different points of view, the more likely it is that people will generally agree on conclusions drawn from this knowledge: this is quite a banality. And the more complex an issue with unsettled theories and models, the less likely it is that consensus will be reached when drawing conclusions. This is also quite a banality.
Or should be… because the paradox on which they point is that in matters of climate change some passionate people, among them scientists, claim that a vast consensus exists on the [catastrophic] anthropogenic cause of it. But to claim that a consensus exists does not establish consensus!
Less convincing in the post is the use of concepts such as “knowability”, level of consensus, and veracity. The definition of these terms is left open and it is also assumed that they can be graded from 0% to 100%.
But for example Newton laws of gravity are not partially known or “knowable”; they are applicable within a frame of confidence, e.g. at velocities that are not near the speed of light, and beyond it another theoretical frame –relativity– shall be used.
And a consensus cannot be partial: there may exist one within a set group of people or there is none. In democracy a majority imposes its view on minorities; it is a way of arriving to a decision, not to a consensus. Among convinced climate scientist it is to be expected that there will be consensus, the non-convinced ones being excluded from the party. This does not make this opinion a truth.
Furthermore I don’t know how to use veracity in this context. The Oxford dictionary defines it as a) conformity to facts; accuracy, and b) habitual truthfulness. I cannot sense a grade of veracity. Newton laws, Darwin theory have not more or less veracity. Climate change is not about veracity but about beliefs in models and predictions, opinions.
Opinions, such as CAGW, will be forged, based on personal experience and observations, inference from reasoning, and knowledge taken from trustful sources. Different conclusions are drawn from different sources and mental frameworks. As long as an opinion is not based on outright lies it deserves to be treated with respect, even if it is felt that it is a wrong one, in which case honest arguments need to be exchanged to try to modify an opinion.
Disrespectful arguments don’t help building opinions; they are the modern littering of the blogosphere. Can we have a consensus on this?
Stan W’s response wasn’t unreasonable. He may have come off as rude but that’s the internet for you.
The premise of the article is that the statements of collective confidence (97% consensus) are not justified by the certainty of the evidence and so there must be some ‘action’ enforcing the consensus (whether knowingly or unknowingly).
It is reasonable to question:
1 Whether the consensus exists?
Which many on the thread have done.
2 Whether the evidence is as uncertain as the article asserts?
Stan W gave referenced papers that he thought justified the certainty.
Skimming the first reference showed that it did not justify the certainty. Quite the reverse, in fact.
But his lack of scientific training is not a fundamental flaw; this is a social science thread.
Stan W did correctly identify one of the assumptions of the article. So he should be treated with respect and rebutted.
“But if carbon dioxide turns out not to be the boogey-man that climate scientists have made it out to be, tens of trillions will be wasted in unneeded remediation.”
It is worse than that.
Even if CO2 turns out to be harmful, those tens of trillions will have been wasted in vain, because the “remediation” is ineffective, impractical, and uncapable of reducing CO2 emissions.
(The “remediation” = windmills, solar panels, electric cars, biofuels).
On-topic and Imho a good read:
Consensus and Controversy – The Debate on Man-Made Global Warming, a report by the Influential Swedish Research Institute SINTEF:
http://www.sintef.no/upload/Teknologi_og_samfunn/Teknologiledelse/SINTEF%20Report%20A24071
M Courtney:
You conclude your post at May 1, 2013 at 2:49 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1293215
saying
That ignores the fact that he was treated with respect and was rebutted several times and by different people in different ways; e.g.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292894
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292913
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292921
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292926
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292937
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292939
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292985
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1292994
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1293017
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1293027
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1293031
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1293071
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1293077
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/the-paradox-of-consensus/#comment-1293082
The latter of those linked rebuttals was from you.
But Stan W ignored all answers, repeatedly claimed he had not been answered, and made unfounded insults of all who answered him.
Stan W is a troll clearly acting to disrupt this thread by similar tactics to those which this especially egregious troll used to destroy another WUWT thread.
He deserves the disrespect earned by his behaviour, he has been rebutted, and in my opinion he warrants at least a time out for his thread bombing.
Richard
Stan W. says:
April 30, 2013 at 5:53 pm
posts made of ignorance are just sad — please, authors, up your game:
“Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
“Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present,” J.A. Griggs et al, Proc SPIE 164, 5543 (2004). http://spiedigitallibrary.org/proceedings/resource/2/psisdg/5543/1/164_1
“Spectral signatures of climate change in the Earth’s infrared spectrum between 1970 and 2006,” Chen et al, (2007) http://www.eumetsat.int/Home/Main/Publications/Conference_and_Workshop_Proceedings/groups/cps/documents/document/pdf_conf_p50_s9_01_harries_v.pdf
“Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect,” R. Phillipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract
“Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate,” W.F.J. Evans, Jan 2006
https://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
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Spectral reading observations and projections that it should be warming due to downward radiation no instrument can find from here on the ground,
Spectral observations from thirty years ago no less, papers from – whenever –
All those spectral observations and projections have been checked up on since.
Temperatures are found to be dropping in spite of your claims, those spectra, prove warmth.
Indeed NOAA
CHECKED YOUR CLAIMS
by putting infrared sensors all over the Great Plains, taking more than three quarter of a MILLION readings: 800,000 –
Guess what, stupid – after FOURTEEN YEARS
instruments PUT OUT S.P.E.C.I.F.I.C.A.L.L.Y. to C.H.E.C.K. your ALLEGATIONS about OUTGOING LONGWAVE
meaning something regarding
BACK WELLING LONG WAVE
and they found out that – not only are you wrong – it’s not even CLOSE.
There’s LESS down welling long wave in earth-generated frequency now,
than when they started checking – Y.O.U.R.* *S.P.E.C.I.F.I.C* . *C.L.A.I.M.S.* –
that IRIS/CERES etc SPECTRAL OBSERVATIONS
“proved” there is down welling earth-generated-frequency INFRARED.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1?journalCode=clim
====
Of course we’ve also got the good old infrared astronomy field: if atmospheric infrared were growing, every group of sophomores taking their first slides of what earth-generated infrard looks like through the instruments, to prove they can tell the difference,
would be posting up the proof that – yep – thim’ air infur eds wuz uh… grOWin an uh…GROWin.
Only problem you’ve got is that whenver we check,
wherever we check,
however we check,
your outgoing longwave misinterpretations keep slapping Trenberth in the mouth. Over
and Over
and Over.
Just as conincidentally, Linden described when he called the entire Greenhouse Gas Effect scam “not even science” and “incompetence built on voo-doo” – or whatever it was. I know he’s got about the same respect for YOUR hence Trenberth’s grasp on what spectra going out have to do with whatever remains.
I’ll paraphrase for myself: N.O.N.E.
Your fervent wish for Trenberth to have ever been right once in his miserable life’s denied.
He couldn’t read them when he was calling them “ever accelerating irreversable cataclysmic fire in the sky”
Which means you, knowing HE’s been laughed at till he won’t show his face anywhere
STILL thinking his crap is actual science,
makes you somewhere down in that group of people who having seen someone’s concepts be demolished by one instrumental check after another
still thinks everybody ought to give it one more try.
Take just one more look.
There’s no need to look. We don’t need that any more, we checked up on what was said about it,
*the first time, Tinkerbell.*
The FIRST time we compared it to actual instrumental output, it was found that
not only is there no correlation between those spectral prophecies and reality,
there is a REVERSE correlation: the more magical gases,
the LESS magical gas,
EFFECTS.
Wow I went back and looked again at that old Trenberth-era bullshoot you were trying to call science. There’s enough “we infer” and “could not be proven through experimental data taken from instruments so we modelled” to make me think you’ve been hanging out smoking dope with old Trenberth himself.
Tell him and Wigley I said kiss my a$$ they’re still both stupid as stumps, or they’d have realized those spectral readings require knowing what you’re talking about before you declare cataclysmic irreversable gaint infrared light -class heaters to be in the sky.
About too set your head on fire.
You have to be stupid Stan but you don’t have to be stupid here.
If you want to though I can show you a list of the number of times I see the words “are here inferred” and “modelled” and “assumption”
and “found not to agree with experimental observations.”
Somebody here or – know what? That’s no one’s job, here, it’s YOURS – so YOU should,
go make a LIST of the number of times YOU see that,
and then come on back and apologize for trying to bring language better used in selling used cars without warranties, to some people who read all those papers when they came out; or at least when they became relevant enough for your Area/51/Bigfoot/Mann Maid global warming site.
Just lettin you know you weren’t dismissed utterly Stan. You were dismissed initially because you believe in the crap.
You were then belittled for taking a bunch of claims of “inference” and “modeling” and “assumption” and “doesn’t match experimental results” into a forum full of debaters used to calling people cons and proving it by their own high definition photography of the experiments, they switch thermometers in.
There is only one lesson anyone needs to know about “consensus” in “science”.
Its the lesson of Semmelweis.
Consensus had it that microbes were harmless and irrelevant to disease. Semmelweis showed by controlled experiment that microbes caused infections. He showed that merely requiring medics to wash their hands drastically reduced deaths from infection on a maternity ward.He was derided, ridiculed and ultimately incarcerated in an insane asylum. There, of all ironies, he died from an infected injury.
Some years later the consensus changed.
The premise of this article was to deal with the nature of consensus rather than the AGW science, or lack of it. Such discussion has merit. As I indicated at the start of the thread, I believe many involved have seen the increasing counter evidence, but chose to continue to defend the “consensus”. But in terms of the Saul Alinsky method, who were the “change agents”? Here the internet can help.
The history of the 97% claim has been discussed above, but there are many more fundamental issues that seem to lead back to a very limited number of individuals.
Where did the “Big Oil” and “Well funded denial machine” claims lead back to? Most trails seem to lead back to one place. Geldspan.
Where does the idea of applying a TOB adjustment to surface station records without supporting meta data come from? Most trails seem to lead back to one place. Karl.
The simple empirical experiments I linked to above show the importance of radiative gases to tropospheric convective circulation and atmospheric cooling. This appears to have been accepted science prior to the global warming hoax. AGW supporters on the blogs seem very reluctant to discuss the role of radiative gases in convective circulation. Is there yet another a skeleton in the closet? Did someone promote claims that initially radiative gases cause atmospheric cooling but after a certain concentration cause warming? Claims that sound “sciencey” but won’t stand up to scrutiny? It appears that someone did. The trail seems to lead back almost two decades. Pierrehumbert.
Every touch leaves its trace.
It’s a good thing for democracy that those at the 1975 “Endangered Atmosphere” conference never anticipated the Internet.
Rick Bradford says:
April 30, 2013 at 4:53 pm
“Mike Hulme has already made the related point that the appearance of consensus makes people less likely to accept the consensus view. The reason is that we are instinctively suspicious of what appears to us as manufactured conformity (especially in a complex area like climate).”
In other words, Hulme, the boss of the Tyndall social engineering institute, is suggesting different tactics, but not different goals.
Now one thing about communitarians like Hulme or Schellnhuber that amazes me is that they write openly that science is in their opinion not about finding the truth but to gain the power, openly theorize about HOW to get the power, and put it all on the web.
“In postnormal science, science-based stakeholder dialogues play a crucial role. One basic idea is that the role of science is not to find the truth and convey it to society but to engage with society for looking for reasonable insights and actions. EYES will contribute to advance both theory and practice of science-based stakeholder dialogues.”
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/research/transdisciplinary-concepts-and-methods/projects/project-archive/eyes
I mean that’s like a Pinky and The Brain comic, isn’t it?
Jacob says:
May 1, 2013 at 2:59 am
“But if carbon dioxide turns out not to be the boogey-man that climate scientists have made it out to be, tens of trillions will be wasted in unneeded remediation.”
It is worse than that.
Even if CO2 turns out to be harmful, those tens of trillions will have been wasted in vain, because the “remediation” is ineffective, impractical, and uncapable of reducing CO2 emissions.
(The “remediation” = windmills, solar panels, electric cars, biofuels).
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Come, come, not wasted – just taken from people around the world and redistributed to the rich, well connected and ‘climate scientists’ as grant money. The ‘people’ would only have frittered it away living their everyday lives and instead they can struggle, starve and die – just as the Malthusians would like. This is the real intention and result of the CAGW scare story.
Sadly.
Steve T
Steve T says:
May 1, 2013 at 5:45 am
“Come, come, not wasted – just taken from people around the world and redistributed to the rich, well connected and ‘climate scientists’ as grant money. ”
Of course it’s a waste.
Misallocating money leads to diminished growth so the waste is the future GDP you don’t create.
This can be seen in Spain, Portugal, greece – they all had German style renewable energy FIT’s before and during the Big Financial crisis; this helped to bring them down. Spain had or has more wind power per capita than Germany, and a solar boom in 2008. Now it’s a country of squatters.