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.
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Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday…for those celebrating. For everyone else, enjoy your day.
If 99 doctors that were on the dole (or receiving spivs) of the drug manufacture recommended a very expensive drug treatment and 1 doctor that was not receiving any dole or spivs from any manufacture I would talk the one doctors advice and so would any sane person.
When your being paid to deliver a conclusion you must deliver it.
Is it the shortcuts we take on our iPads and iPhones that drives the abuse of the contraction ” you are” into “your” (vs the correct form: ” you’re “)?
/pedant
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Uh— didn’t doctors once say that smoking was GOOD for you??? I remember old radio ads extolling the health benefits of a certain brand of cigarettes, and that doctors agreed that this brand was soothing to your throat and tasted good. So— 99 doctors saying something is true doesn’t necessarily mean it is, in fact, true. Things have changed a lot in a lifetime, those same doctors who said that brand of cigarettes was so good back then couldn’t be paid to say the same thing today.
Yeah– I’m an old-timer.
If 99 Orthopedic surgeons tell you that you should have exploratory surgery on your left wrist because they cannot figure out why it is painful and stiff (MRI was clean), but they have no knowledge that rheumatoid arthritis is prevalent in your family history wouldn’t you go to a Rheumatologist first to see if that is the cause ? Happened to me, not with 99 doctors but 2, my Primary Care IM and an Ortho consult. Had to argue with them but they finally relented (probably to just shut me up), and guess what? Yep, positive test for rheumatoid arthritis but we caught it early enough before there was joint damage. Medication works, no exploratory surgery needed.
If those 99 doctors don’t know all the facts their remedy may not be appropriate.
“””””……Jimbo says:
February 2, 2014 at 8:41 am
The great fear of the climate scientists is that they were wrong. They know full well what the implications of observations means and it is causing a blind panic. They are running around like headless chickens to explain the lack of warming and it’s fun to watch.
“The top 10 most spectacularly wrong widely held scientific theories”……”””””
Well I checked out your top 10 Erroneous science theories, and the guy was wrong hisself, on the very first example.
Which was the erroneous “Geocentric Earth hypothesis.”
I believe the current standard model of cosmology, would say that the earth is indeed the center of the universe.
The universe (only one of those) started out as a point singularity, and then space itself expanded (inflation). So everything is still at the center of the universe, including the earth.
So Jimbo; what’s your guess, as to which way to head, to get to just the nearest edge of the universe ??
I think you are misinterpreting a lot regrading the Planck curve and the amount of LWIR one feels from the sun …
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Joe Prins says:
February 2, 2014 at 1:35 pm
Gareth Phillips: Perhaps you may want to take a short peek at the Wiki re scurvy: “It was a Scottish surgeon in the Royal Navy, James Lind, who first proved it could be treated with citrus fruit in experiments he described in his 1753 book A Treatise of the Scurvy,[1] though his advice was not implemented by the Royal Navy for several decades[when?]. The consensus of the Royal Navy could not possibly accept anything from a “non-navy” doctor. As late as the Nares polar expedition in 1875, more than 120 years later, people were still dying of scurvy. Because the consensus of “all” the major polar explorers was that fresh air, cleanliness and personal propriety were sufficient to ward off this disease. Oddly, some seaman did not listen to “the consensus” so that while others suffered and died, they came home. You may call those independent souls the 3 percenters.
Indeed Joe, in fact scurvy was well treated much earlier using scurvy grass and onions. It was not a major problem though until the advent of long sea voyages. The causes were debated as being salted food, poor water and many other things. Captain Cook was sufficiently convinced to encourage his crew to drink citrus juice, an idea seen with great derision in the US, hence the derogatory name ‘Limey’ for English sailors. Healthcare evolves like that, there is a few people who question, then gradually the idea gains more and more support through evidence till it becomes mainstream. It’s a good system. remember, that for every brilliant scientist who made a breakthrough discovery, there were many who were just quacks and could do great damage if they were all given credence. For every James Lind there is an Andrew Wakefield who publishes dodgy research causing the death of people who would have otherwise lived. In medicine, as in life in general, just because you are in a minority does not make you right. It occasionally happens, but in healthcare, the mavericks are just that, and the majority are usually right. If you think I am wrong, maybe you should heed their advice and drink your own urine in the morning and celebrate with homeopathic whisky?
Is there a doctor in the house?
Your guess is as good as mine. Ask the author.
As you point out there has been a warming trend. You forgot to add that there has been a warming trend since about 1860. Further, I asked you for the cause or causes of the 1910 to 1940 steepish rise in temps? I am now asking you again? See these graphs.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/j/l/warmingtrend.gif
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/_nhshgl.gif
I find it very telling that whenever you ask someone who believes in CAGW to give even one piece of empirical evidence that strongly supports the possibility of CAGW, they always ignore it and pretend they never read it. Doesn’t seem to matter who it is, not Gareth… and not even our esteemed friend Mosher.
You would think they would at least say something like “the previous three decades have all been getting progressively warmer than its predecessor, and the most recent 2000-2010 decade the warmest ever”. But, I’m sure they don’t want to use THAT as their evidence because it is extremely weak at best. Plenty of evidence to suggest the MWP was at least as warm as present if not warmer; there have been plenty of examples in the recent past where there have been three or more decades in a row of either warming or cooling; and the current decade in progress 2010-2020 is looking highly likely to be colder than 2000-2010. I really am curious, just what evidence WOULD any of you use as your strongest piece of evidence?
Jimbo says:
February 2, 2014 at 1:34 pm
Your patient is now stable (no surface temperature rise for 16+ years), a small minority of doctors predict his temperature will fall during the next decade or longer. What if they are right?
Hi Jimbo, the metaphor is mistaken. A patient who’s temperature remains high has not stabilised, he is still pyrexial and action is required. If one Doctor said “Let’s keep going with the trial’ and 10 Doctors said ‘no,stop the trial, this Pyrexia is worrying’ , The trial would in all probability stop. If it continued and the patient died, the medical staff involved would be culpable and likely be sued for malpractice and struck off. If against the odds the patient recovered, the one Doctor would be a hero. But would we risk a 10-1 shot on an unknown outcome when lives were at stake? Even if there were a safer but less dramatic option? I think you will agree that it would be pretty unlikely.
You look to have ‘worked’ to answer your own question; regardless of ‘ads’, common sense should kicked-in when the negative side effects began to show themselves, side effects like the smokers cough which appears even in the first year of smoking.
I don’t recall any such ads BTW.
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My apologies Gareth, I did see after my last post you DID reply to what you thought was your strongest piece of empirical evidence. Seems I basically guessed right on what your evidence would be though.
@Jimbo As you point out there has been a warming trend. You forgot to add that there has been a warming trend since about 1860. Further, I asked you for the cause or causes of the 1910 to 1940 steepish rise in temps? I am now asking you again?
@gareth Hi again Jimbo. You’ll note from the essay below that there was rapid industrialisation in the US during that period, as there was in the USSR and many other countries. However I don’t think anyone is claiming that there are not natural variations in climate which can inhibit or enhance the rise. Without greenhouse gasses we would still see those variations, but at a lower temperature. In reality you will probably challenge that idea in a response I fully expect to see. But nothing I can say will persuade you of the validity of my stance, and likely nothing you say will convince me. As you you say, we have to agree to disagree, and I would add, appreciate having the freedom to do it. Cheers G.
http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/337588.html
Hi Alcheson, no problem, I’m responding to multiple posts so they get slightly mixed at times.
The political line is that 97 % of doctors believe premature death is real therefore we are going to tax breathing. The models show that all people who breathe are the ones who die prematurely and via adjustment of statistics the people who live at sea level in smog ridden cities die more, nothing to do with inactive lifestyle and eating habits.
Gareth Phillips says:
February 2, 2014 at 12:26 pm
if a patient was deteriorating before the end of the trial, or if there was a strong correlation between a certain drug and a patients temperature rising we would stop the trial. The correlation may be false, but to continue would be highly unwise.
You really should learn the subject better and do some independent thinking.
The fact are that the Earth was warmer, at the peak of this Holocene inter glacial period, a few thousand years ago.
Since that time there has been a significant increase in CO2 and temperatures have reduced since then.
So what correlation are you talking about? Do you believe that increasing CO2 causes temperatures to go down?
Do a Gedanken experiment. If these scientists had been alive at that moment in the Holocene with lower CO2 levels and produced their models at that time what do you think their models would have said today’s temperatures would have been given today’s CO2 levels?
Still confident that they know what they are talking about?
If so please elucidate, based on facts and observations not models.
If it is the models, if you send me a thousand random roulette spins and some money I will send you a model showing how you can win money at roulette by varying your bets. I can do it every time, over and over again, so it must be true,right?
Alan
Flow says:
bobl, a better analogy would be to say that MRI/ultrasounds/xrays says its cancer. But the biopsy is what tells us wether its malignant or benign.
Not quite, two things there, MRIs are not computational in the same sense, Climate science is using a computational model. The best medical analogy are medical nomograms. Secondly, if the MRI evidence warrants it a biopsy would be done more equivalent to being harmful – eg is the rising CO2/warming harmful, In our case the MRi Empirical evidence has not shown a tumor, so there is no need go further, our climate has a mole,
Flow,
Let’s modify our analogy, you develop abunďant brown patches on your skin, 97 doctors feed your age and skin exposure into a computer program and the medical nomogram which is known to have little predictive ability says that 95 % probability at a person with your age and skin exposure has cancer, so using the same International Panel on Cutaneous Cancer , IPCC, Nomograms not surprisingly the 97 doctors say there is a 95 percent chance you have cancer. They also say we have an known treatment involving the removal of your left lung reduction of the extra weight of your wallet, reducing the stress of managing your bank account, and the reduction of burden of property ownership, but even cursory logic shows such a treatment will be totatlly ineffective on the lesions and harmful to your lung function. Not to mention, you’ll be so poor future treatment will be impossible. It is grudgingly admitted that this treatment will do little for your cancer, but might extend your life by an hour or two. Redistributing your money will do wonders for socialism and the plight of the third world… think of the children, you wonder how much of your property the IPCC will take for itself.
You also go to three financially independent retired doctors unaligned with the International Panel on Cutaneous Cancer who examine the actual lesions, which have not grown for 17 months who tell you, these lesions are natural, there is a remote chance that it might turn into a mild form of cancer which has no potential to kill you, it just looks unsightly. Furthermore they say, the International Panel on Cutaneous Cancer’s (IPCC) own data says if it was cancer it would steadilly grow, even the IPCC models show that there is less than a 5 percent chance of cancer growth pausing for longer than 10 months and no model runs have ever produced pauses longer than 15 months.
What do you do.
Immediately hand all your property over to the International Panel on Cutaneous Cancer, and have your left lung removed .
Accept you have freckles, keep your money so you can treat them later, should they become cancerous and wait and see.
Gareth: As a surgeon, I’d suggest you get a second, independent, opinion.
And as Richard suggested, the short answer is
“You mean the 99 doctors who said my stomach ulcer was caused by stress?”
Who in the name of all the false gods have got the time, and money, to see 99 doctors about a little sniffle – or any other minor ailment?
It is quite obvious that the “Cimate Modelers” who claim to be climate scientists (doctors) are nothing but quack-salvers with snake–oil remedies in their medical bags.
One simple question I have got to ask is: “Why is it necessary to have more than one ‘model’ to tell you what the temperature (T) will be in the year 2100 if you know what is happening in the “climate system”?
After all the IPCC have many different models showing that by the said year the increase of T can/may be anything from 1 to 6 ºC. – This alone is proof that they knowet not what they are doing.
They (the self proclaimed worlds best “Climate Scientists”) themselves have admitted that they could not “account for the warming” unless they added the “CO2 raise” into the equation.
– – – – –
So now that the warming has come to an end, “CO2 raise” is no longer influencing the climate by raising T but it is now affecting the weather. Every storm, deluge of rain etc. is set in train by CO2. – – – It is all your fault still – – – So, repent and pay up – because it is all your fault. (sarc) (asm)
Another aspect of this discussion is the 99% hypothesis. While this is the claim made, that there is a 99% consensus it does not stand up to scrutiny, Donna Laframboise showed this in her book The Delinquent Teenager. It is more that 60/40 which dramatically changes George Clooney’s example.
As a math physicist I fail to see why something that gets its models with 95% confidence wrong is called science.
That record shows that the practitioners failed to understand the basics – it is simply an unfounded pretense at predicting climate.
If your doctor has 95% of his patients die in the OR, you are better off, medically and financially, taking an aspirin.
Gareth, since it’s the current warmth and the recent rate that seems to have you believing the CAGW is real…. In addition to what I posted earlier consider these:
1) Half, if not more, of the warming observed over the past 70 years is due to adjustments to the data.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/04/ushcn-surface-temperatures-1973-2012-dramatic-warming-adjustments-noisy-trends/
Seems counter intuitive that if urbanization was the reason for the adjustments, that the past would be adjusted down and the recent adjusted up? Maybe it’s correct but doesn’t pass the initial “smell” test.
2) For sake of argument, let’s assume the adjustments are correct, and the world did indeed warm by 0.6 degrees since 1970. Of this 0.6 degree warming, it appears at most HALF is likely due to CO2. Since the 60s and 70s were a time of the global cooling scare, which later was decided the part of the natural 60-70 warming/cooling cycle, some of the warming from 1970-2000 must be due to the warming phase of the same cycle. Based on the fact that the cooling phase at least offsets the warming due to CO2, CO2 is likely not responsible more than half of the observed recent warming.
Thus CO2 is likely responsible for no more than 0.3 degrees of warming, and quite likely even less.
C02 has gone from ~300ppm to 400ppm in that amount of time. A 30 % increase in CO2 should have resulted in almost 50% of the expected temperature increase for a doubling of the concentration since it is a logarithmic function. This simple analysis results in an approximate sensitivity factor of 0.6C of warming for a doubling of CO2…. and this even assumes that all the adjustments to the data are valid.