Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Stephan Lewandowsky (of retracted Recursive Fury fame ) has just released a paper supporting the “precautionary principle” (h/t JoNova). According to Lewandowsky, the more uncertain you are about risk, the more you should spend to contain the risk.
Lewandowsky of course applies this principle to climate sensitivity – he suggests uncertainty increases the high end risk.
But now that Lewandosky has opened our eyes, let’s try applying his principle to other issues.
Witch burning. Just as there has never been a clear anthropogenic climate signal, so there has never been a clear demonstration of supernatural power. Yet can we be absolutely certain? Lewandowsky teaches us that the less you know about something, the more worried you should be. So for the sake of the children, we had better dust off those old witch finding books.
Flying saucers. There has never been a verified case of human contact with aliens. But there have been plenty of anecdotal accounts of alien encounters, many of which sound rather unpleasant. Lewandowsky teaches us that uncertainty is risk – can we be absolutely certain Earth is not being observed by malevolent alien beings? Better step up efforts to keep us all safe from the unknown.
I’m sure readers can think of other examples – chemtrails, rains of frogs, strange wart like pimples… it’s a long list.
Thank you Lewandowsky, for opening our eyes to what is really important.
Leo Geiger
What is missing is any uncertainty in your mind that *you* might be wrong about that complete lack of evidence for climate change. Not even a hint of doubt. Just an unwavering certainty that main stream science is so completely, utterly wrong, doubling GHG in the atmosphere is as safe as betting against an alien invasion.
Great – what is your evidence that dangerous climate change is occurring? And please don’t say something tiresome like “because everyone thinks it is” – I’m looking for an actual, measurable quantity.
lee
My new CAGW insurance. For the nominal sum of $100/month I will insure you. On accepted proof of you suffering from a CAGW event, you will receive your money back. Trust me.
Payable by direct deposit only to my Seychelles account.
Problem solved. Uncertainty removed.
Maybe I was wrong, I think I’m suffering a climate related disaster. It is yet another sunny hot day here in Hervey Bay, Australia. My wife is threatening to make me buy an air conditioner… 🙂
We know we are being observed by Lewandowsky.
Ray Boorman
Egg on my face it seems. I have just followed the links to Bristol University’s website, & unless Lewandowski is pulling a late April Fool’s joke on everybody, or has deliberately published a false paper as part of his “research” into “denier conspiracist ideation”, he actually believes the c**p he has written.
Don’t worry Ray, I had to check the source as well – even in these in my opinion scientifically degenerate times, I found it difficult to believe such a paper had been published.
There is nothing wrong with the precautionary principle, as long as it is applied reasonably to reasonable problems. But anticipating “reason” from Lewandowsky is like sniffing unwashed feet in expectation of eau de cologne. Is anybody really surprised?
TerryS says:
April 8, 2014 at 7:15 am
You got it. That is Lewandowsky’s “Confession Trick”. He wants you to say:
“OK, I’m certain we are causing a catastrophic climate change. Now, go way.”
And he’ll shout: “Tricked you! Got you to confess! I’m not going away!”
What a crafty little devil.
There is NO uncertainty as to the harm that is done by global warming alarmism and policies driven by it, and we should damn well be afraid of that CERTAINTY and act on that fear, if we don’t want our livelihoods and our freedoms taken from us and civilization as we know it destroyed..
What unknown? Maybe unknown to him et al. So they can’t predict the weather anymore eh?
One thing for sure when nature turns nasty, there is very little we can do other than run and hide.
These alarmists sound like the same people who thought Hitler was an OK guy! Or some medieval mob mentality, that used witchcraft or alleged witchcraft to blame them for some natural catastrophe, and hanged them. There was one example in England, a wise woman helped cure a neighbor’s pigs from some disease. Instead of thanking her, they killed her for practicing witchcraft.
It is so annoying that so much time and money over the last decade has been put into trying to change the climate. And blaming humans for nasty weather events. What new weather event have we not experienced in the last 100 years. Storms,famines, floods, snow and ice, drought, bush fires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. And disease and wars of course.
Anyway Anthony you stick it to ’em.
Unfortunately, I think it’s worse than we thought!
Psychologists, including Lewandowsky, throw around words like “uncertainty” without understanding their mathematical/statistical meaning or their relationship to the concept of risk. In engineering, , risk is a function of likelihood of an event and the magnitude of associated negative impacts/consequences of the event. Simplistically, R = P * I, where R = Risk, P = Probability of occurrence, and I = Impact. In this engineering approach, uncertainty has no role except to direct research to fill knowledge gaps (i.e., better define the scenario and better judge P and I. . . and therefore, Risk).
Lewandowsky argues that lack of knowledge drives the need for action. No! Large impact of a potential adverse event drives action, but only when it has a reasonable probability of occurrence. And even then, sound policy (decision-making) requires that the event risk be judged against other potential competing scenarios.
For climate change some of the competing negative might consequences include (1) Extreme CAGW doom related to improbably high climate sensitivity; (2) Economic & energy disruption due to CAWG mitigation policies etc. imposed on a climate with low sensitivity; or (3) nothing that can’t be handled via adaptation in the intermediate case. You can assign the probabilities for these three scenarios!
Dan
One of this morning’s news here in Denmark is how a sizable fraction of Americans can’t locate Ukraine on a world map, and that this same fraction favors NATO intervention there. Lewandowsky would seem to be with them.
Well we are uncertain about future climate and weather all the time. Radars can give us a few hours warning regarding an approaching cyclone or bad thunderstorm, flooding rivers. I don’t know where the Paroo river is, there is always warning about it flooding. Maybe they should erect a levy around it. But even with this uncertainty and a bad storm heading towards your region, they often bi pass at the last minute. But to take precautions before the event happens is totally illogical, when you don’t know what that event will be.
I suppose that we all should be taking daily doses of antibiotics. It is a fact that bacterial infections can cause us harm so why not take the precautionary stance to prevent these infections before they start.
Clearly, what is missing from True Believers like Leo is the ability to think rationally.
He just can’t grasp the concept that the burden of proof is entirely on the Alarmists, and they have failed miserably. Their models have failed, and nothing they have predicted has come true. Consequently, they need to continually invent “new-and-improved” models, and excuses for why the old ones didn’t work. The obvious reason is that they aren’t based on reality. They are fundamentall and fatally flawed.
But, the Leo Geigers have a desperate, pathetic need to continue to Believe, desperately clutching at the straw that it “might” still be true. Because, giving up a Belief system is tough. It’s hard on the ego, accepting the idea that you’ve been played for a fool.
The CAGW cry used to be “OMG its worse than we thought!”
Now that temps have paused and the climate model predictions have proven to be worthless,
its “OMG its worse than we DIDNT think!”
Eric Worrall:
In short: You’re not sayin’, you’re just sayin’.
You’re not saying the science is settled, that there is no uncertainty, that there is ‘zero chance’. You’re just saying that doubling GHG in the atmosphere is as safe as betting against an alien invasion…
Asking someone to prove climate science in the comments to a blog? When they decline to undertake that Sisyphean labour, don’t make the mistake of thinking “see, they can’t, because there is no evidence”.
I think it is passed time we move on. Thank you for the discussion. The last word is yours, if you want it.
Mmm. Sounds like solid cognitive science, as it reads at sciencedaily.com anyways. There’s math and everything involved.
It is indeed fortunate for all of us that 97% of scientists understand that global warming is real that its caused by co2 and we are all going to fry. With this level of certainty according to the Lewandowsky principal we don’t have to spend money on it . We only have to spend oodles on risks that are uncertain. I don’t know who is the bigger moron , the person who writes this stuff or the ones who publish it.
The fact he is taken seriously by anyone at all strikes me as orwellian.
Leo Geiger
Eric Worrall:
In short: You’re not sayin’, you’re just sayin’.
You’re not saying the science is settled, that there is no uncertainty, that there is ‘zero chance’. You’re just saying that doubling GHG in the atmosphere is as safe as betting against an alien invasion…
No, I am saying that in the absence of any observational evidence that either GHG or alien invasion is an issue, there is no reason to give greater credibility to the theory GHG is a serious threat, than to the theory that alien invasion is a threat.
Compare the hypothesised risk of GHG to the very real risk that a meteor strike will at some point in the next few centuries cause a serious loss of life, and the difference should be obvious – unlike GHG scares, the meteor theory is backed by some serious observational evidence, such as the near miss at Chelyabinsk, which caused thousands of injuries, but thankfully not large scale loss of life.
Tom don’t that is only useful if you have a bacterial infection. LOL. But it is true, that living in a persistent cold temperature your body to maintain a good immune system you shouldn’t chill. Eat more fat and carbohydrates in winter. Anyway I have to go, and get some food.