We’ve seen the “If 99 doctors said…” argument, or facsimiles, used often by global warming enthusiasts in recent months. George Clooney used it when interviewed at the Britannia Awards. (See the Open Letter to Lewis Black and George Clooney.) James Cameron used it in the trailer for the upcoming ShowTime series “Years of Living Dangerously”. (Refer to the open letter to Mr. Cameron and the other executive producers of that show.) And on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart included a clip of Dan Weiss of the Center for American Progress using it (See the Open Letter to Jon Stewart.)
I responded to those arguments and discussed many other topics in the posts linked above, with links to more-detailed explanations and examples…and, of course, with links to my ebooks.
The following is something I wrote for my upcoming book with the working title The Oceans Ate My Global Warming (or another possible title CO2 is Not a Control Knob). I thought you might use for it when you see the “If 99 doctors said…” argument again.
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Imagine you’re running a persistent slight fever. You visit a new clinic. The nurse takes your vitals and enters them into a computer program. A short time after the computer model completes its simulations, the doctor arrives, advises you of the computer-diagnosed ailment, and prescribes controversial high-cost medications and treatment.
You’re not comfortable with the service, diagnosis, prescription or treatment, so you check out online the computer model used by the clinic. It is proclaimed to be wonderful by its programmers. But, the more you research, the more you discover the model’s defects. It can’t simulate circulation, respiration, digestion, and other basic bodily functions. There are numerous research papers exposing the flaws in the model, but they are hard to find because of all of the other papers written by the model programmers extolling its virtues.
Of course, you would not accept the computer-based medical diagnosis from a model that cannot simulate basic bodily functions and processes. But that’s the position we’re faced with climate science.
We need a second opinion for the slight warming the Earth had experienced. Unfortunately, it is not likely to be coming anytime soon, not until there are changes to the political agendas that drive climate science funding.
# # #
Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday…for those celebrating. For everyone else, enjoy your day.
acquired land in Alaska, or northern Canada or Siberia which will be the only “safe” places in Canada.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
only “safe” places in the world Dave. Siberia and Alaska aren’t in Canada you bleeding moron.
Mike wrote:
Actually using doctors is the perfect analogy. If you think doctors prescribe treatment that is based on science then you’re ignorant of how medicine actually works.
Take heart disease as an example. Just recently the American Heart Association released new guidelines to prevent heart disease. Along with the release of these guidelines they actually admitted that cholesterol levels have no correlation with heart disease which would be shocking to most doctors to learn. I was blown away to see the AHA finally admit it. But the funny thing is that the new guidelines would actually put more people on statins, a drug that’s function is to lower LDL-C. Now doctors don’t want to get sued or run out of the business so I fully anticipate they will follow the new guidelines and end up putting even more of their patients on statins, a drug that’s only function is to lower LDL-C which is proven to not have a correlation with heart disease but does cause a host of side effects in patients and makes the drug companies billions each and every year.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/health/new-guidelines-redefine-use-of-statins.html
The way I see it, the inherent presumption behind this argument is that one is dealing with an issue too difficult to assess for yourself. Now, perhaps for an actor, who has looks but no brains, this is true.
But for many people, it is not an impossible task to assess the evidence for themselves. What people need to understand is that climate science is not high level. The claims don’t require advanced training to check or understand.
A more analogous situation would perhaps be if a teachers union were lobbying for class size restrictions. Don’t you think you ought to just defer to their expert judgment? After all, they know how to educate, you don’t, right?
Except almost anyone could read research on how effective or ineffective a smaller class size is at the margin.
Except, I suppose, actors.
The mistreatment of the many highly skilled skeptics over the years has been equivalent to the smearing of whistle blowers through a plethora of accusatory dismissals to silence or neutralize their impact.
The most disturbing part is the widespread, multi-layered and uniform government involvement in doing so.
No other topic has ever been so elevated to government advocacy at every and all costs.
AGW is the ultimate exposing of how government can run amok with a severity most believed was previously impossible.
I’ll wager that all of the contributors and visitors to WUWT, if asked 25 years ago what they thought was possible, few if any, would ever had imagined how wide and deep the dishonesty in governments has become.
The severity has shaken and challenged every confidence that governments can be crafted with adequate protections.
To watch so many politicians, bureaucrats & academics produce and spew forth (with straight faces) such large doses of indescribably grotesque falsehoods is so disappointing.
Where is humanity heading when something so wrong can grow so large?
Before I go here are some things to think about. We don’t know what it is so it must be co2. Bad climate has literally led to witch hunts in the past. Many women lost their lives due to our bad assumptions.
If the Met Office of activists performs literally worse at future prediction than a monkey throwing darts or a random number generator (which would at least average being right on the basic direction of a warmer/cooler question 50% of the time), they continue to be employed.
Physicians versus activists are utterly not comparable, as reward for the latter has next to nothing to do with actual performance.
The hidden core fallacy in the “99 doctors” comparison is trying to get the reader to falsely think of activists as equivalent to physicians. The “scientists” who are the cornerstone of the CAGW movement and related allies (Mann, Hansen, Ehrlich, etc) are blatantly activists. Not everyone who is a self-proclaimed scientist deserves the title; having a college education, as most people here do, is not that special today.
An activist who correctly predicted the “pause” in global warming 2 decades ago (as some skeptics did) would have been shunned and wouldn’t have been a CAGW activist in the first place.
The strength of an appeal to authority depends on whether the presumed authority has any real meaning, whether it passes actual tests versus reality:
For engineers it does. For economists (less often demonstrative of actual net-beneficial results) it means far less. For activists, it means nothing. Activist groups are the extreme on that spectrum, where towing the party line and not reality is what gets rewarded.
I am not convinced by any of this.
I did not go to the (climate)doctor in the first place. He came to me
When was the last time a doctor came around , unsolicited, to diagnose me and offer me an expensive and disruptive cure?. Under those circumstances, I would certainly ask for a second opinion.
I would ask who the h*ll he thought he was , intruding and wrecking , based on some whacky theory that he could provide no evidence or symtoms for
@gareth Phillips at 5:41 am
we faithfully believed for many years that Tonsils were best removed, and acidosis in cardiac events should be treated immediately with Sodium Bicarb, we are also guilty with with such issue s as thalidomide and victim blaming in family therapy and incorrectly treating gastric ulcers.. We truly believed in certain things, until someone pointed out we were wrong using good peer reviewed science.
Great examples. Here’s another one: Swine Flu vaccine 1976. Viewed as a successful intervention by some:, as a first class SNAFU by others. Indeed, it is a prime example of the situation we face to day in the climate political debate. How do you know you prevented a crisis at great cost if it is debatable that the crisis was real in the first place?
And here we have the experts. A gangster, a comic actor and an inexperienced student.
PMHinSC says:
February 2, 2014 at 7:30 am
February 2, 2014 at 5:41 am
“… the overwhelming body of evidence points in one direction and that is what I will believe until substantial studies show any different conclusions.”
What evidence are you referring to?
1) Is it that sea level rise is rapidly accelerating?
Lets see… tide gauges clearly say NO.
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/news-cache/wo-bleibt-der-meeres-anstieg-verlangsamung-statt-beschleunigung (in German)
English version here…. http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/12/veteran-meteorologist-old-and-new-data-show-sea-level-rise-deceleration-alarmist-projections-contradicted/
And the east side of Manhatten is not underwater….
2) Maybe its the “hot spot” in the air over the tropics, which should be there if the models are right.
Uh… nope not there.
3) Surely, since CO2 is steadily rising, temperatures are steadily rising too.
Wooo……. big problem here… temperatures flat for 17yrs and counting. According to some experts the heat must be hiding in the deep ocean, and according to some others… the missing heat is in the Arctic, and still others claim its still warming globally, its just not showing up on the thermometers we have in place.
4) Arctic ice is completely melted in summer?
No help for the CAGW types there.
5) Antarctic sea ice must be melting according to the models.
Nope, its growing… in fact it is at the highest level in the satellite era.
Overall, global sea ice area is currently above the long term average.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Perhaps good doctor, you could please point out the evidence (not models) that clearly says
CAGW is a problem we must address? I’m having a real problem here….
UK Global warming forecast for 2014. Fen Beagle cartoon…
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/2014/
“peter says:
February 2, 2014 at 6:09 am
Your argument would carry no weight at all with a believer. The vast majority of them don’t seem to understand that the whole theory rests on models and not on actual physical evidence”
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wrong.
The theory was developed in 1850, before models.
In 1896 the first prediction was made:
If you double C02, temperature will increase by 5C
No models. Physics.
nobody believes in the theory BECAUSE of models. We believe in the theory– more c02 means higher temps- because THAT is what fundamental physics dictates.
Now, REFINING the theory, estimating the EXACT amount of warming we will see from doubling
is possible in TWO WAYS
A) run a controlled earth experiment where you double C02 and hold everything else constant
( haha)
B) run a model.
You might also try to narrow down estimate on sensitivity. Those are observational studies
But to do that you have to make assumptions about the linearity of sensitivity. You can make that assumption and answers come out to be 1-6C.. not much progress from the initial 5C estimate, but SOME progress
The last part of my prior comment could be open to misinterpretation, but, to clarify:
Some professions allow being greatly wrong rarely to never, like an engineer can lose his license. Accordingly, engineers are most reliably true scientists in mindset.
Other professions are intermediate on a hard to soft scale. For instance, some of what gets stated by media-highlighted economists is relatively rock solid (especially basic microeconomics), but some isn’t, with some influenced heavily by dogma and with authors unlikely to lose their jobs either way.
Activism is a profession far worse than that.
Steven Mosher says:
Now, REFINING the theory, estimating the EXACT amount of warming we will see from doubling
is possible in TWO WAYS
A) run a controlled earth experiment where you double C02 and hold everything else constant
( haha)
B) run a model.
You forgot one: empirical observations.
Observations show conclusively that any warming due to a rise in CO2 is minuscule.
Sorry about those models… ☹
If anybody, anywhere, at any time ever uses the “if 99 doctors said…” argument I swear I will be before a court of law and pleading involuntary manslaughter.
Due to the results of a test conducted in September 2003 a primary care doctor told me that nobody lives beyond 5 years. Thus I should’ve been dead 5 years ago. This was not a fly-by-night doctor who made that prediction. She was a professor of medicine at a renowned, big city, university affiliated hospital.
In June 2006 I met with a surgeon who performs transplant operations for which I would qualify. According to the literature such operations were performed with a life expectancy of 2 years or less. This surgeon asked me if I would consider the “risks” of that operation at that time. I told him, “No.”
Later, the guideline for that operation was changed for people with a life expectancy of 1 to 3 years.
In early 2007 I asked a specialist to provide me with a range of life expectancies. That doctor (who I will always remember and respect) told me it was very difficult to do but he would attempt to give me an answer. He sat back, thought, and said, “Anywhere from a few years up to 10 to 12.”
He cautioned me that it was more likely to be a few years however.
In 2008 the aforementioned surgeon told me the most critical of my test numbers had not changed and, for the first time, rescheduled the usual 6 month follow up appt. to a year.
That same year I read a quote from someone with the same medical condition who said, “Most people go to a dumb doctor who tells them, ‘you have … so just go home and die. That is not true. We need to get the word out.”
In early 2011 I again met with the surgeon and told him I didn’t think I had the courage to undergo the transplant. He told me there were good reasons not to undergo it and said, “I could shorten your life.” (If only our global warriors were so introspective about what they propose society do.) I have since declined the operation.
In July of 2011 I was hospitalized. That “dumb” doctor told me I had 6 months to a year left to live.
In October 2013 I met with a new specialist who asked me if I had prepared a living will. (Rank amateur.)
I may not be the smartest person on the face of the earth. I’m not good at argument. But if some sniveling dweeb wants to tell us we should transplant the mechanisms of society with an unknown replacement from an unproven source, and then use the infantile, ‘…if a doctor said…” argument, I will meet that person on any stage, in any venue they like, and I will explain a little medicine to them. Bring it on.
Mr. Watts has my e-mail address.
Mosher is mistaken.
There were models for millenia before computers.
Chess is a model. not much use for predicting the outcome of battles, but has lots of uses for training the brain , passing time and explaing basic tactics.
A model is a set of rules applied to some sort of sequence. usually time
Mosh
In quoting Arrhenius you omitted to mention that he did not take int account clouds and in 1906 drastically revised down his estimate of warming from a doubling of co2 to 1.6c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
Tonyb
Then there are strange happenings like the Chair of the AGU Ethics Committee using wire fraud and probably forged documents to poison the climate debate. John Beale guiding the US governments climate policies while lying about a secret position at the CIA.
These are the “doctors” making the diagnosis in the first place.
Steven Mosher says:
Now, REFINING the theory, estimating the EXACT amount of warming we will see from doubling
is possible in TWO WAYS
A) run a controlled earth experiment where you double C02 and hold everything else constant
( haha)
Sorry Mosh, even if you COULD do this, it wouldn’t suffice. Our real Earth has many parameters that interact with one another. Even if you did do that, you would only show that you probably have the equations correct for CO2… nothing more. You still would not know whether the real earth would warm by only a miniscule amount or catastrophically, due to CO2. Afterall, it’s the feedbacks that lead to the catastrophic possibilities.
Empirical observations to date indicate that the net feedbacks are negative. Thus, the amount of warming we should expect based on empirical evidence so far is that net warming will be LESS than that of CO2 effects alone. Pretty much exactly one would expect to find in a stable climate system that has been around for over a billion years.
The 99 doctors argument is indeed disconcerting. This is probably because it is presented by offering a class of participants who enjoy a strong presumption of considerable infallibility. Some years back I was discussing this with an engineering student, and offered “cross-culturally”, the suggestion that I thought the average doctor isn’t any smarter than the average engineer. “I don’t either,” he replied, “they just have stronger stomachs.” Broadly considered, and justifiably, they get cut some slack for this.
However, I believe it was the redoubtable Lewis Thomas, author of “The Youngest Science – Notes of a Medicine Watcher” (1983), who wondered with regard to illness, at what point in history, one was better off going to a physician rather than staying home and letting Nature fix things Herself, as She often would do. Tough question (100 years? – argue as you will). But I think medicine (strong stomachs considered) is over that hump.
Climate science? Not so much.
I really like the tonsils analogy. If anyone is confronted by the “99 doctors” argument, just point down your throat and say, “See, I don’t have any tonsils. My kinds had the same problems and they have their tonsils. What changed?”
The warmist belief is a little more complicated. Their allegiance is primarily to the prescribed treatment rather than the veracity of the diagnosis. In fact, they believe the medicine will make the patient better regardless of whether the diagnosis is accurate or not.
Skeptics have primarily engaged in the debate of the diagnosis. It may be more productive to attack the treatment. Lomborg, as a statistician and economist, appears to have done just that.
The big problem is the 99% or 97% number is a lie right off the bat. If you let your opponents define the argument you will lose. The best approach is to show the 99% number is a lie. Once that is done you are showing your opponent is dishonest and then you win.
Another counter-argument is that it wasn’t so long ago that 99% (or so) scientists prescribed to the theory of eugenics. There are countless other examples, but you get the point.
In the early 1950s doctor were advising people to take radiation. Before that mercury was good and then sulphur.
Gareth, You would really worry me. Any one that would go through the logic that you espouse and come out the other side believing the same as before …. well suffice it to say that I would not want you near any thing I was doing.