Barry Woods writes via email:
A very interesting article, with Mike Hulme dissing the 97% paper along the way.
But I think perhaps the most interesting part, is it seems to allow sceptics at the policy table.
“What matters is not whether the climate is changing (it is); nor whether human actions are to blame (they are, at the very least partly and, quite likely, largely); nor whether future climate change brings additional risks to human or non-human interests (it does). As climate scientist Professor Myles Allen said in evidence to the committee, even the projections of the IPCC’s more prominent critics overlap with the bottom end of the range of climate changes predicted in the IPCC’s published reports.…The now infamous paper by John Cook and colleagues published in May 2013 claimed that of the 4,000 peer-reviewed papers they surveyed expressing a position on anthropogenic global warming, “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming”. But merely enumerating the strength of consensus around the fact that humans cause climate change is largely irrelevant to the more important business of deciding what to do about it. By putting climate science in the dock, politicians are missing the point.…In the end, the only question that matters is, what are we going to do about it? Scientific consensus is not much help here. Even if one takes the Cook study at face value, then how does a scientific consensus of 97.1% about a fact make policy-making any easier? As Roger Pielke Jr has often remarked in the context of US climate politics, it’s not for a lack of public consensus on the reality of human-caused climate change that climate policy implementation is difficult in the US.”
Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but if Mike Hulme thinks Cook 97% is nonsense AND pointless, this will be noticed. Source:
https://theconversation.com/science-cant-settle-what-should-be-done-about-climate-change-22727
============================================================
With climate skeptics thought of as ‘credible’, the SkS kidz will have an aneurism.
And then there’s this: John Cook is a Filthy Liar
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Mike Hulme: “In the end, the only question that matters is, what are we going to do about it? Scientific consensus is not much help here.”
Well it does kinda matter agreeing what “IT” is in order do decide what action ( if any ) is needed.
Hulme seems to be trying say there is some overlap of skeptic and AGW-ist positions and so trys to infer that all agree we need to do something “about IT”.
This is crude attempt to reframe the debate into “the science is settled” (except for some details about the numbers.
It is far from settled since what the obervational evidence suggests is a beneficial degree of warming and extra plant production which is the polar opposite of “OMG we must all stop breathing and reduce the humam population of the planet by 80% (for the sake of future generations)”.
So first we need to agree whether “IT” is no panic or “IT” means PANIC.
Most on both sides agree about about Cook’s stupid “study” because he (deliberately) asked the wrong question.
I watched Hulme at the HOC climate committee meeting. The epitome of a ‘swivel-eyed loon’. A self loathing elitist. Don’t ask me what I really think.
We unencumbered outsiders are the scientifically and technically trained proven experts, slowly but successfully exposing not mere mistakes but shear fraud at the very core of climate “science” and yet much faster in fact than such junk science consensus as was embodied in the work of the Michael Mann of his day, Ancel Keys, who created his own single bullet theory that was the dietary fat/cholesterol hypothesis about heart disease that lead to a medical disaster to this date since the real demons were now more popular refined carbohydrates. I see this type of literal negotiating process by climatologists as major damage control and the seeking of a soft landing that they do not deserve, and that not so much the older demographic of skeptics will not well accept but the whole generation of school indocrinates are likely to become a very rebellious youth culture in the extreme, righteously so. The insanity of the whole modern and postmodern liberal arts Acadamy is likely at stake, including upside down toilets and scribble art, and thus inertia may set in a bit longer until the new generation gets up to speed on charlatanisn in their midst.
But I think perhaps the most interesting part, is it seems to allow sceptics at the policy table.
No it doesn’t. he is just saying “The science is settled, now what should our response be?”
unless he explicitly allows for a possible response to be zero, he isn’t allowing sceptics at the table…
Which one of the cowards and liars is somewhat less of a liar and somewhat more of a coward?
Sorry, I am not fascinated by this question.
@jim Clarke
“Of course, Mike Hulme is absolutely wrong in making that statement. There are several more important questions that need to be answered first. The most important question is: What is the human influence on climate change?”
Well, I feel the most important question is, “What will happen vis-à-vis climate and temperature in the immediate future?” Being able to prognosticate accurately is more important than knowing the effect we have on climate to 3 decimal places.
Clearly the models are incapable of helping us, based as they are on defective and or incomplete understandings. There is little use in knowing that the temperature was 15 in 1970. What will it be in 2030? That is a good question.
As the academic community has abandoned the public, choosing to build worlds that are ‘models all the way down’ (we haven’t forgotten, Willis) they have pretty much ruled themselves out as contributors to solutions. If I as a consultant insisted on using methods that always give the wrong answers, I am not adding value, am I?
He wants to know ‘what to do about it’. Well, nothing for a start. You cannot implement any policy based on model predictions that we know, with 100% confidence, are incorrect 95 times out of 100. Even if you salvaged 5% confidence it is worthless as a guide to social and political action.
Mike H, you gotta wake up the Honourable Members and make it plain that every single claim of something that happened in the past 15 years that was blamed on ‘global warming’ was incorrect. The fact that there are millions of such baseless assertions does not make any of them valid. There has been no warming for years! Blaming hurricane Katrina on warming that occurred between 1977 and 1987 (as an alternative) would be ridiculous.
There is no evidence showing that a warmer world is a worse world in need of any intervention or repair. The only meaningful action at the moment is to tell farmers to plant earlier, grow longer and harvest earlier while the warmth lasts. Substantial evidence points to a downward turn for the next few decades. We may have to do something about that.
“Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but if Mike Hulme thinks Cook 97% is nonsense AND pointless, this will be noticed.”
Yes, I think you are reading too much into it.
Mike Hulme is living proof that possessing knowledge of what CAGW really is, i.e. a huge cultural phenomenon, does not neccessarily protect one from being simultaneously immersed in that culture. Check this quote:
“The function of climate change I suggest, is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved…It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change – the matrix of ecological functions, power relationships, cultural discourses and materials flows that climate change reveals – to rethink how we take forward our political, social, economic and personal projects over the decades to come.
Climate change also teaches us to rethink what we really want for ourselves…mythical ways of thinking about climate change reflect back to us truths about the human condition. . . .
The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identifies and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us…Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.
…climate change has become an idea that now travels well beyond its origins in the natural sciences…climate change takes on new meanings and serves new purposes…climate change has become “the mother of all issues”, the key narrative within which all environmental politics – from global to local – is now framed…Rather than asking “how do we solve climate change?” we need to turn the question around and ask: “how does the idea of climate change alter the way we arrive at and achieve our personal aspirations…?”
He’s in love with the ‘big idea’, the ‘new social paradigm’. He now suggests that politics, not science, should take centre stage. But if, as seems increasingly likely, the science tells us that there’s very little problem, or possibly no problem, to which the economists might add that there’s likely net benefit with the first century, how then will we feel about this aggressive cultural entity that is reframing our politics and deploying itself across many of our human projects and feeding us satisfying brain chemicals to serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs? Not to mention the vast resources CAGW has already consumed. Even if there is a genuine problem, feeding the social beast trillions before you’ve identified the nature and magnitude of that problem, will only bury whatever truth we wanted to uncover under an explosion of narrative, as indeed has occurred.
Mike displays all the characteristics of a very dangerous animal; a high priest who understands not only the power of religions, but how they work and how they may best be deployed to move nations. Yet simultaneously he believes utterly in his chosen religion too. His skillful and constant reframing plus nuanced balancing against increasing skepticism, serves only that religion. True skeptics should be cautious of priests, not just the ranting types, but those with kindly smiles and outstretched hands and apparently sage words too.
Friends of Science have issued our fourth press release through PRWeb concerning the Cook et al 2013 study.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=207
This news release (second link) announces our review of the four major “consensus” reports.
“97% Consensus? NO! Global Warming Math Myths & Social Proofs”
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=744
America Thinker has an article on our report. It says, “The conclusions of the report are rather shocking, and it deserves close attention. No doubt, the group, which is based in Calgary, will be attacked as an energy industry front, but its examination of the underlying reports on which the alleged consensus is based can be replicated. One way or another, a fraud is being committed – either the debunking is a fraud, or more likely, the consensus claim is fraudulent. Given that trillions of dollars are at stake, this report deserves the closest possible examination.”
Disclosure: My funding from the “energy industry” is exactly twice the funding that Anthony Watts receives.
Scottish Sceptic says:
February 4, 2014 at 10:30 am
Haven’t read your post, but the summary makes excellent points. There ARE a lot of us outside of the university walls and the halls of government that actually can add 2 and 2, as well as understand the written word – sometimes I do have to go the dictionary, of course, but I can understand it as well. I don’t like people that have that nasally sound, look down their nose at you, and pretend that what comes out of their mouths are the words of God. I know what programming is, what programming can do, and what it can’t do, and it can’t predict crap if doesn’t have all the necessary elements to form a solution. And I will always agree with Einstein’s statement that a single fact can disprove a theory.
By the same token, I can understand that if you actually do BELIEVE the material that we consider gibberish, you can get caught up in the “we don’t have time to show you the facts, accept the reality” scenario. There are times that might be true, but in the case of climate change, there IS time to get it right. Their problem is that they see the world as being over crowded with people, and they are trying to create an agenda to get humanity to reduce population – not human hating, just want to reverse the trend of population, and they think that this issue can be used for that purpose. Although reduction in CO2 won’t make it happen, they think that scaring people into the mindset will help control fertility. Their approach is wrong although their motives may be honest. Trouble is, pushing humanity back to the dark ages will only reset the clock, and it will just start all over again.
This.
And what you’re missing is what Hulme is actually doing. That is far more interesting than some silly opportunity to thumb nose at Cook the Filthy Liar.
Hulme and the rest of the climate clowns see the writing on the wall. They have been bluffing on their trumped up, oxymoronic, “scientific consensus”. Their ability to do that is collapsing around them, and they know it. Simply put, the science is going the other way. They know that, too. They have known it longer than the rest of us.
But the he cat is out of the bag now. Significant swaths of the public are already accepting that the global warming narrative is political hype, and the scientific community – including peripheral climate scientists – is right behind them. The number of people duped by their lies is well past its peak, and drawing attention to the science by continuing to talk about it is only going to accelerate the fall. The only hope for the political dead-enders is to get the fix in before their politically effective minority vanishes.
Hence Hulme’s blatantly cynical and anti-scientific play – He finally admits that it doesn’t matter to him whether or not the globe is warming. He admits it doesn’t matter to him whether or not human actions are to blame. He admits that it doesn’t matter to him whether or not future global warming brings additional risks to human or non-human interests. The only thing that matters to him and his target audience is the politics.
Nothing other than the politics has ever mattered to these guys, but admitting to it would have undercut their cover story – the pretense that it was all about the science. Now that Mother Nature has blown their cover, they want the debate about global warming to become “more political and less about the science”. That is their way of “reinvigorating democratic politics”.
Interesting.
Question: Who put climate science in the dock, when and charged with what?
He refers to Myles Allen in evidence to the committee; is that the answer?
I think so.
He acknowledges that climate science is being questioned and his response is to declare it not worthy of defence.
Let’s just act now anyway – the Precautionary Principle rears its ugly head.
But I think we can agree that climate science is being questioned now.
JJ says: February 4, 2014 at 1:00 pm
“And what you’re missing is what Hulme is actually doing. That is far more interesting than some silly opportunity to thumb nose at Cook…”
Agree.
andywest2012 says:
February 4, 2014 at 12:02 pm
“Mike Hulme is living proof that possessing knowledge of what CAGW really is, i.e. a huge cultural phenomenon, does not neccessarily protect one from being simultaneously immersed in that culture. Check this quote:
“The function of climate change I suggest, is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved…It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change “”
Thanks for that quote. I always recognized Hulme as a macchiavellistic deceiver and warmist-sociological functionnaire de luxe; very much like the German Schellnhuber with his technocratic Great Transformation plans. Both of them bosses of the state’s leading propaganda institutes in the respective countries; both of them completely candid maniacs with the backing of their political masters if one cares to actually read their drivel.
I think the time of these employed Macchiavellis is over now that the EU is up to the eyeballs in debt, and they are already spent forces. They are not useful in the fight for the survival of the EU.
So much science reason was left at the door just over the theories of “if” AGW is this or that. In the same way you might have a science diagnosis regarding a rare disease it wouldn’t indicate you would go to the lab techs who ran the correct blood test and ask them to become surgeons to cure or mitigate your condition.
It’s very common now for scientists to desire “policy making” roles but there is no logic to it at all. The real issue is the actual underemployment of real scientists and the sort of make work culture that goes with government funding. Something that grew out of Cold War funding and the central planning culture of WW2. The public is willing to support the tangible more than the theoretical and that sets it all on the slippery slope of junk science sausage making and makers. AGW is a textbook example of this culture.
@ur momisugly Ken Hall says:
February 4, 2014 at 10:09 am
Spot on Ken. People should stop crowing about low level twits such as the SkS crowd.
The real ones to be concerned about are the politically savvy operators such as IMO Hulme, who bear great responsibility over time for the corruption of science that is climate sceance. But who always seem to astutely reposition themselves away from the front of the fan, when you know what is about to hit the fan.
Hulme seems a master of repositioning in this way, while furthering the agenda exactly as Ken notes.
Lovelock does the same.
So BTW does George Monbiot who is very good at what he does. George was given a position at Green College by one of the Godfathers of the CAGW scam, Crispin Tickell.
But purportedly was shocked, shocked by the revelations of climategate, so threw Phil Jones under the bus.
How does what Hulme now says in his latest “reframing” square with the Lindzen quotes from Hulme book:
all the best
brent
Lindzen quotes from Mike Hulme’s book “Why We Disagree about Climate Change”
http://www.viddler.com/v/79d667f3
As follows:
“The Idea of Climate Change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change but what climate change can do for us”
“Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical and spiritual needs”
“we will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects”
“These myths transcend the scientific categories of true and false”
“In the end, the only question that matters is, what are we going to do about it? Scientific consensus is not much help here. Even if one takes the Cook study at face value, then how does a scientific consensus of 97.1% about a fact make policy-making any easier? As Roger Pielke Jr has often remarked in the context of US climate politics, it’s not for a lack of public consensus on the reality of human-caused climate change that climate policy implementation is difficult in the US.”
………………
He is saying the same thing the IPCC said at the very start. The IPCC mandate states:
All Mike Hulme is doing is repositioning himself to ‘look reasonable’ without changing one little bit. He is still all about ‘assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for
the understanding of human induced climate change, its potential impacts andoptions for mitigation and adaptation.’ which was the goal in the first place.Do not take your eye off the pea!
Shell Oil originally funded CRU along with BP and both are heavily invested in Solar, Wind and Natural Gas. Both want to see their major competitor Coal DEAD. Both wants lots of subsidies from government. Looks like the plan is working out just fine. (The UN and World Bank wanted the worldwide carbon tax.)
Shell VP Ged Davis, ‘ Vice President, Global Business Environment in Shell International Limited and head of Shell’s Scenarios Team, ‘ showed up in the climategate e-mails with his IPCC/Shell Oil Scenarios. “From 1997 to 2000 he was facilitator and a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Emissions scenarios and in 1996/97 was Director of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Global Scenarios.’**
This is the one called: Sustainable Development later called Agenda 21.
In other words ‘Sustainable Development’ with natural gas replacing coal is the huge win for Shell Oil and BP. Solar and Wind were window dressing to lure the Luddites. You can expect them to be abandoned in the next 10 – 20 years or less except for niche markets.
** http://www.igu.org/html/WGC_pdffiles/CV_SR1_Davis_E.pdf
Hulme seems to believe that human beings are the primary cause of climate change. And that the change is significant enough to cause “risk.” I hate to break it to him. 97% of all people do not agree with that.
The human species has proven to be amazingly adaptive and lives and thrives in a wide variety of climates already. Almost all human beings (97+%) are continuing on with their lives as if they believe they will be able to adapt to the climate change headed our way whatever it might be.
99 percent of Christians believe Jesus was god incarnate on earth, and they’ve studied the matter longer and harder than anyone else, often for their entire lives.
The 97% consensus claim has as much [scientific] and mathematical as the claim 9 out of 10 cats prefer …
The irony is the first give away that Cook’s work was rubbish is that reproduction of the 97% in the first place , for it could have been a equally rubbish or equally as good a claim to come up with another percentage higher or lower.
But because 97% had entered AGW dogma , in the same way the worthless hockey stick has, Cook had no choice but come up with the exact same number in his turn.
Its still amazes me the poor quality in so many ways of the AGW prophets, years from when when ‘the cause’ has fallen people will look back and ask . How did they manage to get so far with such rubbish in the first place ?
brent says: February 4, 2014 at 1:22 pm
Heh, beat you to it with the telling Hulme quote, see 12:02pm . But the extra bit on the end of yours, about myths, is a corker too 🙂
It would be nice to think that the “Polar Vortex” did what repeated hits in the head with The Hockey Stick could not. Knock some sense into the issue. But I tend to agree with those who have said that he’s not admitting that an actual changing climate is beyond Man’s ability to control but rather let’s try to do something about it anyway. After all, the science is mostly settled.
It is worth looking at Mike Hulme’s four points of why politics, not science, must take centre stage. In brief they are:-
This is in addition to the economic cas. For instance, here that in the UK we are paying far more to mitigate each tonne of CO2 than the Stern’s estimated social cost of carbon of $85/tCO2 – just about the most extreme estimate available.
Another level of criticism is that the “science” has been a tad over-Cooked.
IMHO everyone here has missed the most importabt point that Mike Hulme made : “As climate scientist Professor Myles Allen said in evidence to the committee, even the projections of the IPCC’s more prominent critics overlap with the bottom end of the range of climate changes predicted in the IPCC’s published reports.“.
That overlap occurs at an ECS of 1.5. So we could move forward if we all – warmists and sceptics – got together and agreed on what we are going to do based on an ECS of 1.5. If and when there becomes agreement on a higher or lower ECS, we can work on that then. Etc.
What that would achieve is a common approach based on a common agreement (of ECS ~= 1.5).
The obvious way to start would be to work out what the risks are, given an ECS of 1.5. For example, if we burned all our reserves of fossil fuel at or a bit above the current rate (or at a different rate if agreed on), thus causing atmospheric CO2 to continue to increase at around the current rate (or at a different rate if agreed on), by how much would the temperature rise. How much of that rise would be beneficial, and after what point would it be harmful.? How harmful would it be, and thus how much is it worth spending to prevent it? Would preventative spending actually be effective? Alternatively, would adaptation be more cost-effective than prevention?
My guess is that continuing to burn all our fossil fuel reserves would, at an ECS of 1.5, add rather less than 2 deg C to Earth’s temperature, and that anything up to 2 deg C is beneficial. That needs to be worked out properly, by the warmists and sceptics and policymakers all working together from the agreed premises. But if I’m right, then the answer to Mike Hulme’s most pressing question, “In the end, the only question that matters is, what are we going to do about it?” would be easily agreed on by everyone : Nothing.
Why is human activity ‘to blame’ for climate change? In the face of it, increasing temperature, at the level it has been occurring, is a benefit for humanity and virtually all life forms. Dr Hulme still has his AGW assumptions firmly in place, I think.