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
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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
“In the end, the only question that matters is, what are we going to do about it?”
By not “doing anything” we are implicitly making the choice to react to any changes as they happen by adaptation. That is a perfectly sensible course of action given the current uncertainties IMO.
JJ (above) is largely correct. Hulme is sensing a decisive change in the wind and is positioning himself accordingly — but not irrevocably. This has nothing to do with scientific ability and integrity, but everything to do with survival. He thinks he has seen which way the crowd is now headed and is trying to get out in front, crying “Follow me!” Smart political operators have always done this.
My take:
He does not like Cook’s work because efforts spent to prove something makes it look like there is still something to prove. Thus detracting from the urgent message, “something must be done”. Mike Hulme is not arguing from reasoned thought about the consensus being real or not. He is arguing from the urgency of a political agenda: Sh** or get off the pot. He believes Cook is not up to speed and wishes him to go away, even though Cook is on his side.
Your worst enemy is often a friend in political agenda circles.
“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.”
While correct, this statement is ass-about-face. The new IPCC published report (WG1) has decreased its projections so that they finally overlap with those which have been continuously advanced by ‘lukewarmers’.
The bad news is that this progress was achieved only because the Stockholm plenary meeting felt compelled to reject the circulated outputs of the climate models, reducing them by 43% through the next 30 years. The CMIP5 models themselves were not corrected. They keep on spewing out figures that are not even acceptable to the IPCC. All scientific papers published during 2014 will be based on those rejected projections.
I think it’s wishful thinking on your behalf.
“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”.
The science is settled. Now how do we deal with “Climate change” is Hulme’s message.
No about turn or concessions there.
Human caused Climate Change is very much like Poverty. The solutions are much the same for both. If you believe that you can solve poverty through taxing the poor and thus encouraging them to become rich, you will believe you can solve Climate Change through taxes and regulation.
Low cost energy is what makes modern life possible. Take away the low cost energy and you will create poverty. The cure is worse that the disease.
Use your opponents strength against them. It is the secret of martial arts. How to defeat the stronger opponent. It is the basis of Chinese foreign policy.
The Chinese have made it very plain for anyone paying attention. The problem is that academics politicians in the US and EU are still dreaming up ways to spend money they don’t have, to solve problems 100 years in the future, as an excuse to ignore the problems of today. They ignore Chinese foreign policy, because they don’t understand it.
Western culture believes you fight strength with strength. Thus we have the war on drugs, the war on poverty, and soon the war on climate change. These wars can never be won, because the economics of the “war” fuels the problem. A Sun Tzu taught 2500 years ago, politics decides the battle, but economics decides the war.
If Western governments accept as legal fact that humans are causing climate change, and that climate change is harmful, then there is only one conclusion possible. The West owes the rest of the world hundreds of trillions of dollars in reparations for climate damages, caused by western industrialization over the past 150 years.
Mike Jonas says:
February 4, 2014 at 2:27 pm
“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.”
Yes…you are exactly right. In a rational world, the obvious choice would be to do nothing about man-made climate change. That is even the logical conclusion of Mr Hulme’s argument. But Mr. Hulme is not really interested in logic or rationality. He is interested in persuasion and social engineering. Or more succinctly…power and control. One does not garner power and control by suggesting that nothing be done.
To Mr. Hulme, the situation is irrelevant. Whatever it is, he will argue that something needs to be done about it and that he is just the man for the job!
Well, the idea of scientific consensus is quite valid. It’s part of how we handle experimental error. You have to build up a base of evidence if you want to challenge an accepted theory. Theories are entirely built on consensus – do most people in the field view them as adequate explanations of data? Can the theory explain away possible contradictions in the view of most experts in the field? Data is absolute, explanation is relative.
The issue with global warming consensus is that the theory is not persuading the skeptics. The proponents of the theory are trying to call consent before the debate has finished, hoping to just steamroller their opposition.
Omega Paladin says:
“Well, the idea of scientific consensus is quite valid… Theories are entirely built on consensus…”
No, theories are built entirely on being unfalsified, no matter how much scientists try to disprove them. It is the consensus that is destroyed when a theory is falsified.
But when you write:
“The issue with global warming consensus is that the theory is not persuading the skeptics. The proponents of the theory are trying to call consent before the debate has finished, hoping to just steamroller their opposition.”
I agree 100% with that statement.
On one level, he’s right. The climate is changing, will change, and responsible planning will include preparing for it. That’s why it misses the point to talk about consensus, we should be talking about solutions.
The big problem is, coming at it from his angle, he assumes the climate change will necessarily be hotter. Well, maybe it will and maybe it won’t. If humans are not the primary driver of climate change (and only a fool or a charlatan would say we are), than any plan must account for the fact that the change might as well be colder as warmer.
If we spend ourselves silly fighting climate change because we thing we ARE the primary driver, or if we spend our money stupidly by preparing for only certain types of change (warmer), then we are leaving ourselves weaker and less able to defend against other kinds of change. It would be the Maginot Line of climate preparedness.
Smart money will be spent on flexibility.
Yes, you are reading way too much into it. All that’s there is his recognition that the tactic isn’t working. Duh! Please don’t give him credit for anything else, it isn’t warranted the way I read what he actually says.
AndyJ Another one who doesn’t realize Galileo was wrong. So your point is pointless.
Yes, what we are going to do about it is THE central question. And if the science is settled, then the climatologists can STFU and turn things over to the economists. Yes, that’s a scientific discipline as well.
But of course, things aren’t “settled” so I guess we’ll keep them around. And of course, the climatologists would like to be the ones driving the bus. They think THEY should dictate policy, but that’s not how it works in the real world.
I spend many years as a finance exec in the pharmaceutical industry. The scientists can do whatever they want to in the lab. They rule that kingdom. But if they decide they’d like to spend all the money in the checking account, and bet the future of the company on something that “97%” of them think is a sure thing, they have to go to the board for approval. Those who are in charge of the money make the decision on how to spend the money.
For as much complaining you hear from climatologists about non-experts playing in their sandbox you’d think they would realize when they have wandered into someone else’s.
There’s nothing “credible” about scam science. Period.
People know what it is, they know other people know what it is,
and the only people who think they don’t know what it is,
are the people in politics and media, selling it.
The thing about scam science is it always is perfectly transparent to some, then the more popularity it gets, the less believed in it gets, because so many people, have so many ways, to check so few fundamental laws of science in physical law.
Gas mechanics are the simplest phase of matter. I don’t care and neither does anyone who understands matter, how many people claim it’s all too complicated to understand.
Multiple people using multiple methods have discerned the alternating 20/30 year cycle approximation in climate while they have a hard time getting anything said.
Multiple people told the purveyors of this scam science, using computer modeling to invert the effects of the atmospheric temperature response curves, it wasn’t real, from the very beginning.
James Hansen back in the earliest days of this was having credible honest people say outright, that he was a snake oil salesman in just about, that many words. He was known for peddling bunkus even back then.
Mann’s testimony before Congress that yeah, “the world is gonna end and you have to listen to me, but I can’t show my data around because it might have later commercial value”
is practically a line from a movie about scamming con men.
The fact politicians and media figures have tried to sell this entire pseudo-scientific scam isn’t a negative reflection on those of us who told everyone from the beginning it would never be as accurate as tossing coins.
It’s the reflection on those who sold it, who hawked it, who believed in it and mocked everyone to scorn they could.
People en masse don’t fall for scam science. Government sells it and people have it forced down their throats.
People simply aren’t as gullible as politicians and media people wish they were and hope they are.
P.r.e.c.i.s.e.l.y.
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NikFromNYC says:
February 4, 2014 at 11:21 am
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”
What matters is not whether the climate is changing (it is);
But not as even an undergrad engineer could conclusively prove by less than the amount it has varied in much earlier periods well pre industrialisation.
Very few would care whether or not climate alarmists were right or wrong if the ‘policy solution’ was cheaper then doing nothing…Ohh wait…in the US the price of natural gas is such that many utilities prefer burning gas rather then coal because it’s ‘cheaper’…one of the reasons the US leads the world in emissions reductions.