Guest essay by Kip Hansen, St Thomas, USVI
The AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY just published a Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society titled: EXPLAINING EXTREME EVENTS OF 2012 FROM A CLIMATE PERSPECTIVE edited by Thomas C. Peterson, Martin P. Hoerling, Peter A. Stott, and Stephanie C. Herring. [hereafter EEE2012].
Kenneth Chang at the New York Times reported on the findings in an article, “Research Cites Role of Warming in Extremes”, on 5 September 2013. In this piece, Chang includes the following paragraph, which was picked up and repeated in the Andy Revkin’s NY Times Opinion Page blog, Dot.Earth, filed under Climate Change:
“The articles’ editors likened climate change to someone habitually driving a bit over the speed limit. Even if the speeding itself is unlikely to directly cause an accident, it increases the likelihood that something else — a wet road or a distracting text message — will do so and that the accident, when it occurs, will be more calamitous.”
This is unfortunate, for two reasons:
1) The articles’ editors said no such thing.
2) Even if they had, what Chang says just happens not to be true in and of itself.
Andy Revkin , doubling down on Chang, says: “Ken Chang’s news article in The Times ….. includes an apt analogy used in the introduction to the studies: [followed by the paragraph quoted above].” This too is unfortunately not true, for the above two reasons, an analogy can’t be apt if it wasn’t made and isn’t true, , and the fact that the analogy being referred to appears not in the introduction, but in the CONCLUSIONS AND EPILOGUE section, written by Thomas C. Peterson, Peter A. Stott, Stephanie C. Herring, and Martin P. Hoerling.
What Peterson et al actually said was:
“To help understand the difficulty of determining the anthropogenic contribution to specific extreme events, consider this driving analogy (UCAR 2012). “Adding just a little bit of speed to your highway commute each month can substantially raise the odds that you’ll get hurt some day. But if an accident does occur, the primary cause may not be your speed itself: it could be a wet road or a texting driver.” Similarly, while climate models may indicate a human effect is causing increases in the chances of having extremely high precipitation in a region (much like speeding increases the chances of having an accident), natural variability can still be the primary factor in any individual extreme event. The difficulty in determining the precise sensitivity of, according to our analogy, driving speed on risks of accidents in particular conditions (wet roads, texting drivers) can explain why somewhat different analyses of the same meteorological event can reach somewhat different conclusions about the extent to which human influence has altered the likelihood and magnitude of the event.” [EEE2012, page 64]
Point 1: The editors said no such thing:
Notice that Peterson says nothing about speed limits, nothing about speeding, and nothing about any subsequent accident being “more calamitous” – nothing at all about any of these three points. Chang makes up his own, new and improved analogy. Why? We can’t know – as a journalist, he should have reported what was actually said.
Point 2: Even if they had, what Chang says just happens not to be true in and of itself.
It is a long term, well understood fact that the safest driving speed on America’s highways is “a bit over the speed limit” – actually, more specifically, a bit over the average speed of the traffic on the road, which is often, on a wide open road, at or just a little bit over the speed limit. This is known as Solomon’s Curve, or the Crash Risk Curve, a graph that shows the least accidents happen to those who drive just a bit faster than the flow of traffic. Note that this has nothing to do with absolute speed (for example, 55 mph vs. 75 mph) but speed relative to the other cars and trucks.
So, was what was said in EEE2012 true?
“Adding just a little bit of speed to your highway commute each month can substantially raise the odds that you’ll get hurt some day.”
If you generally drive slower than the flow of traffic, if you are a strict 55 mph’er on an Interstate that flows at 67 1/2 mph, you’ll be safer if you “add a little bit of speed”, because you be involved in fewer (statistically) accidents. However, if you are recklessly already driving 75 mph on the same Interstate, and add a little bit of speed, you’ll be increasing your risk of accident and increasing the kinetic energy of any resulting crash (the last true for the 55 mph’er too).
On its face, in a plain everyday English sense, I’d say the analogy is false as used, because, well, it depends. But I’ll leave it up to the traffic engineers and statisticians — way too much wiggle-room in the phrases “just a little bit of speed” and “can substantially raise”.
My advice to journalists: Use direct quotes, stick to the facts, don’t make stuff up (and for Andy Revkin – don’t trust other journalists to have done these things, check them yourself).
My advice to Climate Scientists: Use analogies that are proven and demonstrably true – not just ones that seem true or sound nice, stick to the facts and don’t make stuff up.
*****
EEE2012 at http://www.ametsoc.org/2012extremeeventsclimate.pdf
Chang at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/science/earth/research-cites-role-of-warming-in-extremes.html
Solomon’s Curve at http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/fzfeens/trans/Transport-lecture4.ppt , see slides 53 and 55
Kip Hansen, I had to check the Solomon Curve. I’d never heard of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solomon_Curve.png
Thanks. Now I’ll feel justified the next time I get the urge to use other cars as cones in a slalom course.
Regards
Analogy is not analysis.
Over the years, I’ve seen Kip Hansen’s many cogent comments posted at DotEarth. It’s delightful to see that keen, rational and analytical mind appear as a WUWT essayist.
There’s a very very important point to all of this. What happens, not when someone drives a bit faster, no, but when someone drives a bit slower than the overall traffic speed?
The answer: At just 10 mph below the overall speed of traffic someone’s likelihood of being involved in a fatal accident increases a whopping 10 times.
Why? Because anything that disrupts the smooth flow of traffic significantly increases the risk of an accident.
If our noble climate warriors (sarc) want to use speed limits as an analogy to climate change, well, by all means let them use it. Think of the risk to the smooth flow of society, to the imposed slowdown, that their policies would genuinely impose society to. And all to appease a primitive believe in the dangers of speed, of advancement, of progress. Remember, the highest speed roads are the safest. The US Interstate Highway system is safer than all roads by a factor of about two. Moreover, the difference in the fatality rates between the speed limit free sections of the German Autobahn and the speed limited US Interstates is statistically indistinguishable.
I don’t fault the journalist for sexing up his report. Several of the research articles in the report also had color commentary and literary devices in their writing style. Climate science researchers seem especially prone to veering off the road of technical writing:
“Hurricane Sandy slammed into the U.S. mid-Atlantic seaboard…”
“To the Dutch, these cold spells come as a great relief, as they ignite hope…”
“It is not the climate alone that creates these outcomes, but rather the climate’s interaction with extreme poverty, high endemic rates of malnutrition, limited or nonexistent governmental safety nets, and poor governance. In 2011, for example, the worst drought in 60 years combined with chronic food insecurity, high global food prices, and the actions of Somali terrorists to produce an estimated 258 000 deaths in Somalia (FEWS NET 2013).”
These colorful phrases are designed to bring about an imaginative vividness of the situation, not the technical aspects of the situation. And it irritates me no end.
I seem to remember a good number of posts here around the time of the last couple of major tropical storms, demonstrating that there is nothing in the least extreme or unusual about current weather patterns; in fact extreme weather events have declined rather than increased.
Surely this is what Revkin and anyone else writing on the environment in the MSM should be reporting, regardless of whether their analogies are justified or not! Why nitpick about a detail of the reporting, when the central point is completely and seriously misleading?
Given that the EU is well along with the introduction of mandatory remote controlled governors to enforce speed limits, “In-Vehicle Speed Support”, the analology is quite apt.
http://www.eureferendum.com/results.aspx?keyword=speed%20limit
Here’s a bit of journalism which might be of interest from the UK:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html
Give Andy Revkin a break. This is not an unreasonable analogy, and it’s moderate relative to typical hyperbolic rhetoric on this topic.
“The question was posed, what is the difference between two identical cars colliding head on at 100 mph or a single car at 100 mph hitting a concrete wall.. The answer is no difference at all.”
uh!? of course there is a difference, the first is a 200mph crash the second is a 100mph crash.
Of course while Mr Gore and his church leaders cruise along just below the speed of sound in their private jets we paid for he will say that 0 mph is statistically the safest speed on all highways (I would bet statistically 200 mph is very safe as I doubt there have been many fatalities on public roads at that speed but plenty stationary cars get hit, in the UK last week for one) these tyrants are just after enslaving us workers for their luxury elite lifestyle !
Why? We can’t know – as a journalist, he should have reported what was actually said.
It is clear that Kenneth Chang is not a journalist; he is an activist. It is also clear what he advocating for.
Adding just a little bit of warmth to the planet over time can substantially raise the odds that we continue the current era of human development. Otherwise the plant is slipping into the next glaciation period which would be calamitous
Chang trades on the common perception that increased driving speed increases both the likelihood of an accident and there severity of the accident that results.
This is not true of climate: Increased heat in the climate system may decrease both the likelihood and severity of some types of extreme weather events. ‘Global warming’ theory predicts that the temperatures of the climate system should become higher and more evenly distributed. That would reduce both the incidence and severity of extreme weather events that are due to cold and/or to differences in energy content.
Chang uses one lie in to tell another…
Heat does not represent usable energy. The ability to do work does not depend on temperature, but on temperature gradient.
If a system is uniformly 30 C everywhere then you can not extract work from it, but if a system is 0 C at one point and 30 C elsewhere then you can, despite the fact that the system is on average cooler.
If the main result of global warming is to warm up polar regions, then one might hypothesize — on broad thermodynamic grounds — that violent weather will decrease.
Simply put, most “journalists” these days, who generally lean left, suffer from poor reading comprehension (meaning what they report from their “investigation” will not necessarily reflect what they read) and their ideological bent allows them to jump to illogical conclusions.
Most warmistas are liberals and being the nanny staters they are, exceeding the speed limit is automatically bad so, it wasn’t too difficult at all for Chang and Revkin to put their ideological two and two together to get five. 😉
I want to echo what JJ and rabbit said. The major problem with this is not that the analogy was misrepresented, but that it is plain wrong.
Physics requires that any warming due to GHG’s results in less temperature differential between day time high and night time lows, between summer highs and winter lows, and between low latitudes and high latitudes. Weather is driven by temperature differential, so a warmer world is a more tranquil world. As for high temperature extremes, since the temperature change at low temps is larger than temperature change at high temps, for every extreme high temperature event that one can attribute to warming, a larger number of cold extreme weather events must disappear. Extreme cold kills a lot more people on this planet, not to mention animals and crops, than do extreme high temp events.
The analogy is just wrong on so many levels it hurts.
Jim A says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:05 am
Ironic fact: When the speed limit on interstates was restored to 65 after years at 55, the highway death and serious accident rate went down significantly.
Common sense reason: Drivers more alert at higher speed and not falling asleep as much.
What’s your source for that? This study came to the opposite conclusion: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/28294/0000048.pdf?sequence=1
“Results revealed significant increases in casualties on roads where the speed limit was raised, including a 19.2% increase in fatalities, a 39.8% increase in serious injuries, and a 25.4% increase in moderate injuries.”
AlexS says:
September 8, 2013 at 8:01 am
“The question was posed, what is the difference between two identical cars colliding head on at 100 mph or a single car at 100 mph hitting a concrete wall.. The answer is no difference at all.”
>>>>
uh!? of course there is a difference, the first is a 200mph crash the second is a 100mph crash.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Uh, no, the original comment was correct, assuming that the two cars are of the same size, weight and general construction (and that the concrete wall represents an immovable object). Since both cars “crumple” due to the collision, the stopping distance for each is identical to hitting an immovable object. The closing speed is double of course, but the distance over which the car goes from 100 mph to 0 is the same.
Doesn’t Revkin post here periodicly? Maybe he can chime in and clarify. Go Patriots!!!
“Paul Homewood says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:27 am
Reducing speed limits inevitably means more traffic congestion (you are on the road longer, therefore more cars are on the road at any point in time). To visualize this, just think of 50 mph sections on motorways at roadworks. All of a sudden, from a relatively open road, cars are driving nose to tail. This sort of congested traffic causes many more accidents than doing a bit over the speed limit.”
The above is a fact. To reduce congestion, increase the speed limit, which results in less time per vehicle on the road. It is a function of driver capability and vehicle that cause an accident. Driver education/training is key to reducing accidents and fatalities. In journalism, ethics is not part of the core value set which the lack of generally is not fatal.
Actually traffic fatalies went up >25% in 1987 when the speed went up on the interstates. Maybe people should check the data before making stuff up.
Chris says:
September 8th, 9:29 am
‘What’s your source for that? This study came to the opposite conclusion: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/28294/0000048.pdf?sequence=1‘
Sorry, but the aforementioned research is nonsense (too kind a word for it). Fatality rates are historically measured in terms of fatalities per 100,000,000 (one hundred million) vehicle miles. That measurement has been used since the 1920s and takes into account all variables. It is the only correct measurement. For instance, if there is a stretch of road that experienced 10 fatal accidents in one year and the following year experienced an exact doubling of traffic volume with 15 fatal accidents that road did NOT become more dangerous, even though fatal accidents went up by 150%. In terms of mileage (traffic volume) that road became far safer; the motorists’ exposure to a fatal was reduced.
But, in the research you linked to, the researchers (also, too kind a word) used solely the percentage change as illustrated above. In the 15 page PDF I could find no mention of fatalities per 100,000,00 miles of travel. Why not? Could it be because that would not have given them the result they wanted? If one looks at a graph of traffic fatalities, from the 1920s to present, on the mentioned vehicle mileage principal, they will not be able to discover the date the 55 mph speed limit was implemented or the date it was eliminated. I don’t know current rates, but in the late 1990s the fatality rate on the US Interstate Highway system stood at about 0.90 per 100,000,000 vehicle miles. Despite these being the fastest roads that rate is about 1/2 the rate of all US roads in general, and indistinguishable from the fatality rate of speed limit free sections of the German autobahn.
The real takeaway from this is that the alarmists, who just a few years back were shouting imminent doom from the roof-tops, are now reduced to making the weakest of weak statistical ‘could happen’ analogies. Game over, unemployables.
Good journalists research the context of information from particular individuals to be sure it doesn’t just reflect the opinion of one person. However, Chang seems not to have noticed that even when warming was occurring (late 70s to late 90s), there was no increase in extreme weather. In modern times, the most extreme decade was arguably the 1930s, before AGW began. It doesn’t matter how compelling a story is told by an analogy, if it doesn’t match observed data, it isn’t apt.