Evidence, not consensus, is what counts
My latest (and last) Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal:
Last week a friend chided me for not agreeing with the scientific consensus that climate change is likely to be dangerous. I responded that, according to polls, the “consensus” about climate change only extends to the propositions that it has been happening and is partly man-made, both of which I readily agree with. Forecasts show huge uncertainty.
Besides, science does not respect consensus. There was once widespread agreement about phlogiston (a nonexistent element said to be a crucial part of combustion), eugenics, the impossibility of continental drift, the idea that genes were made of protein (not DNA) and stomach ulcers were caused by stress, and so forth—all of which proved false. Science, Richard Feyman once said, is “the belief in the ignorance of experts.
My friend objected that I seemed to follow the herd on matters like the reality of evolution and the safety of genetically modified crops, so why not on climate change? Ah, said I, but I don’t. I agree with the majority view on evolution, not because it is a majority view but because I have looked at evidence. It’s the data that convince me, not the existence of a consensus.
My friend said that I could not possibly have had time to check all the evidence for and against evolution, so I must be taking others’ words for it. No, I said, I take on trust others’ word that their facts are correct, but I judge their interpretations myself, with no thought as to how popular they are. (Much as I admire Charles Darwin, I get fidgety when his fans start implying he is infallible. If I want infallibility, I will join the Catholic Church.)
And that is where the problem lies with climate change.
chris colose says:
July 8, 2013 at 7:32 pm
“He says to a blog full of electrical engineers…”
A lot of otherwise smart people evidently get taken in by fancy rhetorical tactics and sciency sounding nonsense…
You mean such things as, “it’s worse than we thought,” or “the heat is in the pipeline,” or “Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 35 years” or “that’s great in practice but it’ll never work in theory (models)?” Sciency sounding nonsense like that?
I wish more Darwin fans would actually read what he wrote. Confronted with his descriptions of non European races in Voyage of the Beagle, most of the people who drive around with his name in a walking fish on their bumped would feel a bit green around the gills. He was all about racism, as a believer in evolution ought to be.
:You mean such things as, “it’s worse than we thought,” or “the heat is in the pipeline,” or “Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 35 years” or “that’s great in practice but it’ll never work in theory (models)?” Sciency sounding nonsense like that?:
More like the type of rhetoric that makes one think this has any relevance…
@Jimbo –
yes, climate change can be dangerous – and the changes you refer to have absotively, polilutely zilch, nada, rien, nulla, nichrts, inge and whatever other word for “nothing” you can think of, to do with human activity. I challenge anyone to prove how much effect there is of human activity, or even that it can be identified at all. And history proves that at most, it is nugatorier than nugatory.
Anon says:
“I wish more Darwin fans would actually read what he wrote… He was all about racism, as a believer in evolution ought to be.”
Yep. Racism leads to new species, which is evolution.
chris colose says:
July 8, 2013 at 6:43 pm
“The fact is Ridley is too stupid to understand even most elementary feedback analysis, and is now appealing to this “evidence not consensus” rhetorical tool that I guess is supposed to rile up the crowds.”
I recognize that “evidence not consensus” is a slogan and worthless for that reason. But are you suggesting that you want to defend the thesis that consensus belongs to scientific method? If so, please do explicate and defend the claim. Your work will be graded.
//”I recognize that “evidence not consensus” is a slogan and worthless for that reason. But are you suggesting that you want to defend the thesis that consensus belongs to scientific method? If so, please do explicate and defend the claim. Your work will be graded.”//
The “evidence not consensus” line is an old rhetorical talking point people use, probably as a “rah rah” device when preaching to large groups of people. Without being stated, it usually gives off the odd impression that a) That this is how science is currently being done (not true), and sometimes b) the consensus must, by default, be wrong (or the idea that the rebellious position is automatically right, which is equally as absurd).
In reality, the inherent irrelevance of agreement is actually tacit knowledge by scientists, and no scientist makes a living by just agreeing with everyone else. There’s a lot of room for debate on many things and that is why science is still alive as a way of inquiry. If everyone in climate (or any field) just agreed with people, that discipline would not produce papers.
Nonetheless, some ideas are pretty uncontroversial…plate tectonics is real, evolution happens, gravity is real, cells exist, CO2 absorbs infrared radiation and heats planetary atmospheres, etc. The “consensus” on all these things has emerged, often very slowly, after the science has been done… and that is what gets left over in the textbooks after countless disagreements, and refinements to knowledge…they aren’t labelled true because a big crowd of scientists decided to all agree on them after a vote. And actually, for most of those things above, agreement was rarely the response by the broader community when the ideas were initially put forward. For this reason, the development of consensus on a topic is usually taken seriously, particularly by those who have not been initiated into the field….the only difference between climate/evolution and something like the dynamics of black holes is that the former infringes on people’s belief or value systems, fears, or financial interests.
Of course, most people who shout “evidence not consensus” (often in caps locks) already know this. But when you have no science to argue against the consensus, you then give a philosophy of science seminar on why consensus is irrelevant…I seen someone do that in a lecture on why the prevailing ideas about plate tectonics were wrong. Needless to say, the geologists weren’t convinced.
Phillip Bradley says: “Show me a correlation. Without a correlation the CO2 feedback is just an unsubstantiated claim…”
Even -with- a correlation at some level, causation cannot be established from that alone.
Thanks, Anthony. This article is pay-walled at the WSJ.
Thanks, Dr. Ridley. Good article, but it is a pity you did not say how much do you think the “climate sensitivity” is.
Matt, If you throw a banana at a chimpanzee, of course you get a reaction !!
chris colose says:
July 8, 2013 at 7:32 pm
“He says to a blog full of electrical engineers…”
A lot of otherwise smart people evidently get taken in by fancy rhetorical tactics and sciency sounding nonsense
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No smart sensible people who can spot a trillion dollar fraud based on reversing feedbacks.
You are supposedly “…a PhD student in an Atmospheric Science…” So I assume you have heard of a chemical called H2O? And hopefully you are aware it covers over 70% of the earth and that the atmosphere contains ~ 4% H20? With luck you have even had a bit of geology.
Ever heard of the Cocos and Nazca plates and the Neogene uplift?
They completely shoot down CO2 as a major factor in the earth’s climate.
Way too many people like Chris on the public dole cheerleading for “settled” science.
Some time ago WUWT published a blog about spiders. In the comment I talked about a wolf spider who had taken up residence in my studio and was eating the bugs there. I named the spider Schmidt. I apologize to the spider. Of course, I could have done worse. I could have named the spider Chris
In this comment I am taking advantage of most people’s distaste for spiders. Actually, without spiders we would be knee deep in insects. As an example of many peoples fears about spiders: As a teen I kept many black widows as pet. I have frequently had one walking on my hand. Yes, they are potentially lethal, BUT their jaws are so small they cannot bite through a human’s skin.
Amazingly, the daddy long legs, which everyone has known and most have probably had in or on their hands is more lethal then the black widow.. It’s safe to pick up a daddy log legs, their jaws are too small also.
log= long. Lord,as Anthony well knows, I can’t type or spell
Chris Colose used to write articles for Skeptical Science, the blog which is the antithesis of truth and is an example for everything that is wrong with climate science and it’s mindless adherents. That alone should explain his rantings.
Sorry mods, my name came out as Venter87 instead of Venter due to a typo.
But does this really matter? Your protestations, wailing and fiercely logical, factual arguments…? They don’t matter because no one cares.
I met w/ my Broker (Twenty-something, Famous firm, College Grad-ya’ know.) last Friday and we wandered off track. (No, he didn’t vote. Because he has nothing to believe in.)
Our children: Have nothing to believe in.
All they care about is what’s in it for them. Truth doesn’t matter. Freedom doesn’t matter. The future doesn’t matter-it’s all B.S. It’s all propaganda. Empty, meaningless B.S. America, Iran, Egypt, Canada-all countries are the same. None any better than the other. (Besides: Bush did exactly the same thing-Apparently since Bush did it too makes it perfectly okay by him.)
People; we screwed up. We did this. We did this to our kids and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Here, we are all worried about scientific truth, clean air, the sanctity of unborn life, the purity of our drinking water, making sacrifices, recycling…for what? For our children’s future of course!
Our kids? We THOUGHT we raised them to care about ‘Mother’ earth.
Reality??? All they want is for us to hurry up and die so they can inherit the house.
…well… That and the OBVIOUS fact that Obama is the greatest President this country has ever known. (All that ***free*** stuff, ya’ know.) Until we figure out how to straighten out the thinking of our own children-all the thoughtful, factual, in-depth articles matter for squat. No. Less than squat.
P.S. I tried to talk to this kid, he treated me like a dottering old woman. (maybe I am) Really: I tried …but I ran out of words. OK-That’s not ENTIRELY true. I had enough words left to write this.
GlynnMhor says:
July 8, 2013 at 8:37 pm
Without a correlation, there is no evidence of causation.
@ur momisugly Chris Colose:
I agree that a consensus in a scientific field must ordinarily be given respect. (This point was made strongly in Henry Bauer’s book, Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method. He called it the “knowledge filter.”)
But climatology is a rogue science. The consensus within climatology exists primarily because it has attracted people who have adopted the ecological POV. They thus have a predisposition to think that man’s disturbance of an ecosystem is going to have bad unanticipated results. Their teachers and textbooks have the same underlying perspective. They also tend to have a pro-regulation bias–they suspect that the result of unregulated human activity is likely to be bad. And some simply resent the spectacle of unregulated humans doing their thing (i.e., they’re control freaks).
The field scarcely existed before climate alarmism (foundations and grant-giving agencies) began to fund professorships, institutes, departments, and studies. Prior to that infusion of funds, it was objective–professor Lamb was an example. Afterward it became a greenie enclave. Donna’s book, The Delinquent Teenager . . . shows how the IPCC is riddled with greenie activists, who promote and mutually reinforce others of their stripe and ignore voices outside their camp. Solomon’s The Deniers shows how the climate establishment won’t take notice of objective criticism. Climatology’s consensus has not been the result of ordinary scientific give-and-take, but of its members constituting a biased sample–and of their employing power-play techniques that manufacture consent and marginalize dissent.
Regarding two “97%” surveys that warmists more often cite, here is a summary of most of their flaws, by WUWT-commenter Robin Guenier:
This George Mason poll http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union. It did not cherry pick the respondants who gave them the answer they wanted, and it asked more sophisticated questions, below. Under its “Major Findings” are these paragraphs:
IOW, 59% doubt the “catastrophic” potential of AGW. I suspect that number would be higher now, after six more flat years.
chris colose says:
July 8, 2013 at 8:28 pm
I’d call that a meta-argument briefly summarized as, if a consensus of scientists say x, there is no need to examine the evidence for x.
In essence this shifts the argument from the evidence for x, to the evidence for the consensus on x.
The IPCC initially claimed the consensus on AGW or CAGW, or etc. It’s never really clear what the consensus is on.
What evidence did they have for the claimed consensus?
Answer = zero evidence.
The only hard number we have, is that there were (from memory) 30,000 scientific objections to the content of the first IPCC report.
I’m afraid you will have to do better than that, Chris.
[snip]
Good to see you folks are still stuck on ClimateGate and Michael Mann.
Climate Gate
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/04/14/east-anglia-climate-change.html
“We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the climatic research unit, and had it been there, we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it,” the panel said.
“Rather, we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganized researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups, their internal procedures were rather informal.”
Michael Mann
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html
“There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.”
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Meanwhile, the arctic is starting to turn on a dime. please keep your attention on this space: it IS, after all, a WUWT link:
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_compare.jpg
Right about Friday night and going into next week you will see something you have never seen before. Look at Tennessee and watch what happens over the weekend and into next week on the weather charts. should be interesting.
I don’t think Lord Ridley has been keeping up very well. He says that
“A decade ago, I was persuaded by two pieces of data to drop my skepticism and accept that dangerous climate change was likely. The first, based on the Vostok ice core, was a graph showing carbon dioxide and temperature varying in lock step over the last half million years. The second, the famous “hockey stick” graph, showed recent temperatures shooting up faster and higher than at any time in the past millennium.
Within a few years, however, I discovered that the first of these graphs told the opposite story from what I had inferred. In the ice cores, it is now clear that temperature drives changes in the level of carbon dioxide, not vice versa.”
A decade ago .. well, that’s 2003. If he’d read the TPCC AR3 2001, it says:
“From a detailed study of the last three glacial terminations in the Vostok ice core, Fischer et al. (1999) conclude that CO2 increases started 600 ± 400 years after the Antarctic warming. However, considering the large uncertainty in the ages of the CO2 and ice (1,000 years or more if we consider the ice accumulation rate uncertainty), Petit et al. (1999) felt it premature to ascertain the sign of the phase relationship between CO2 and Antarctic temperature at the initiation of the terminations. In any event, CO2 changes parallel Antarctic temperature changes during deglaciations (Sowers and Bender, 1995; Blunier et al., 1997; Petit et al., 1999). This is consistent with a significant contribution of these greenhouse gases to the glacial-interglacial changes by amplifying the initial orbital forcing (Petit et al., 1999).”
No-one is saying there that CO2 is leading the temperature rise. But if he had tried a bit of quantitative reasoning, he’d see that none of this is relevant to AGW anyway. At Ice Age end, the temperature rises 6-8°C, and about 200 Gt carbon crosses to the atmosphere, some of which comes from the warming sea. But now we’ve directly injected 370 Gt fossil C into the air, and warming has so far been less than 1°C. This is nothing like what happens at the end of an Ice Age; that carbon isn’t a response to temperature. It’s something new that we have to work out.
“… if he [Matt Ridley] had tried a bit of quantitative reasoning, he’d see that none of this is relevant to AGW anyway …”.
Maybe if that had been pointed out in his science fiction movie, millions of people would not have been deceived by Al Gore into believing that human economic development is leading to climate catastrophe.
Nick writes :
If you read his article properly I don’t think Matt Ridley is disagreeing with what you write. CO2 response to glaciations does not directly say much about how the climate will respond to anthropogenic increases in CO2. We should instead use recent temperature data to estimate that. Otto et al. find TCR ~1.3 C and ECS ~ 2.5C (possibly less). These figures support the “luke warming” position.