By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Professor Shaun Lovejoy, as he continues the active marketing of his latest paper purporting to prove that “the world desperately needs to drop the skepticism and change course – humanity’s future depends on it”, writes in a hilarious op-ed at livescience.com:
“The majordomo of this deniers’ hub [Watts Up With That] is the notorious Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, who – within hours [fast on his feet, that Viscount is: strong in him the Force must be] – had declared to the faithful that the paper was no less than a ‘mephitically ectoplasmic emanation from the Forces of Darkness’ and that ‘it is time to be angry at the gruesome failure of peer review’.”
The Professor describes this as “venom”. No, sir, it is eloquence in the service of truth. Perhaps he would prefer a scatological rather than an eschatological metaphor. Happy to oblige. The scientific merit of his paper is aptly described by the third, eighteenth, first, and sixteenth letters of the alphabet, taken sequentially. Or, if he prefers it up him palindromically, the sixteenth, fifteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth.
Let me put on my major-domo’s tails, white starched wing-collar, maniple, and white gloves, polish up the nearest silver salver, and, Jeeves-like, shimmer in to address some the fashionable pseudo-physics in Professor Lovejoy’s latest Technicolor yawn.
After deploying the hate-screech word “deniers”, he wheels out Svante Arrhenius, who, “toiling for a year, predicted that doubling CO2 levels would increase global temperatures by 5-6 Cº, which turns out to be close to modern estimates”.
The Professor is perhaps unaware (for he does not seem to be aware of all that much in the realm of physics) that Arrhenius is known to have made errors in his line-by-line calculation of the warming effect of CO2 (actually performed at intervals over the long Arctic winter, not over a whole year). He had, for instance, relied on defective lunar spectral data.
Furthermore, Arrhenius – a chemist and not a physicist – had not at that time come across the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, which would greatly have simplified his calculations and made them more accurate.
However, in 1906, in Vol. 1, No. 2 of the Journal of the Royal Nobel Institute, he recanted and divided his earlier climate-sensitivity estimate by three:
“Likewise, I calculate that a halving or doubling of the CO2 concentration would be equivalent to changes of temperature of –1.5 Cº or +1.6 Cº respectively.”
So few of the F. of D. are aware of Arrhenius’ recantation that I am happy to provide a facsimile (Fig. 1) of the quotation from his 1906 paper, published in German (which perhaps explains why the largely English-speaking F. of D. are unaware of it).
Figure 1. Detail in facsimile from Arrhenius, S., 1906, Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen (“The possible cause for climate variability”). Meddelanden från K. Vetenskapsakademiens Nobelinstitut 1: 2, 1ff.
It is also important to note that Arrhenius confined his analysis to radiative transports only. He did not take account of all the numerous non-radiative transports – afternoon convection in the tropics, baroclinic eddies in the extratropics, evaporation everywhere, etc. – that militate homeostatically against any sufficiently small perturbation of the natural climate (such as doubling the tiny concentration of CO2 in the air).
Nor did Arrhenius take account of the biggest unknown in the climate – the behavior of clouds. All other things being equal, returning plant food to the atmosphere from which it came will cause some warming. But we do not know that all other things are equal.
Professor Lovejoy is also incorrect to say that Arrhenius’ original estimate of climate sensitivity was “close to modern estimates”. IPeCaC clings to a sensitivity interval of 1.5-4.5 Cº, entirely below Arrhenius’ original estimate and almost entirely above his revised estimate.
Many “modern estimates” point to a climate sensitivity well below IPeCaC’s interval. We may even see less than 1 Cº of global warming per CO2 doubling (Monckton of Brenchley, 2008, 2010; Douglass & Christy, 2009; Paltridge, 2009; Lindzen and Choi, 2009, 2011; Spencer and Braswell, 2010, 2011; Loehle & Scafetta, 2011, etc.).
Next, the Professor says that in the scientific method “no theory ever can be proven beyond ‘reasonable doubt’”. It would be more correct to say that some hypotheses (though few in physics and very few in climate physics) can be demonstrated definitively.
For instance, it is possible to demonstrate the Theorem of Pythagoras. My own simple proof by inclusion is at Fig. 2.
Figure 2. Demonstration of Pythagoras’ Theorem by inclusion. The boundary contains either the square on the hypotenuse (red) and two congruent right triangles or the squares on the other two sides (blue, green) and two more congruent right triangles. Subtract on each view the two right triangles. Then the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Q.E.D.
Professor Lovejoy sets out his stall thus:
“Climate skeptics have ruthlessly exploited this alleged weakness, stating that the models are wrong, and that the warming is natural. Fortunately, scientists have a fundamental methodological asymmetry to use against these skeptics: a single decisive experiment effectively can disprove a scientific hypothesis. That’s what I claim to have done. Examining the theory that global warming is only natural, I showed — without any use of GCMs — that the probability that warming is simply a giant natural fluctuation is so small as to be negligible. He compounds this point later by saying “skeptics dismiss the models”.
Well, are the models right? A single experiment demonstrates that, on the central question how much global warming should have occurred since 1990, the modelers’ hypothesis that the trend in global temperature would fall on their predicted interval (the orange region in Fig. 3) has been demonstrated to be false. Skeptics doubt the models not least because the modelers’ confidently-made predictions have been demonstrated, time and again, to be wild exaggerations.
Figure 3. Near-term projections of global warming (IPCC, 1990: orange region), compared with observed outturn taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies, 1990-2014.
Professor Lovejoy says that his “CO2 proxy … predicts with 95 percent certainty that a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere will lead to a warming of 1.9 to 4.2 Cº”. He prays in aid Fig. 4.
Figure 4. “This figure visually shows the strong linear relation between the radiative forcing and the global temperature response since 1880 … showing the 5-year running average of global temperature (red) as a function of the CO2 forcing surrogate from 1880 to 2004. The linearity is impressive; the deviations from linearity are due to natural variability. The slope of the regression line is 2.33±0.22 degrees Celsius per CO2 doubling (it is for the unlagged forcing/response relation).”
I do not pretend to understand this graph. For a start, it seems to show (albeit in exasperatingly non-standard units) that just about half the CO2 forcing since 1750 occurred before 1960, when CO2 concentration last stood at 316 ppmv. However, the official story-line (in standard units) is that the CO2 forcing from 1750 to 1958 was 0.7 W m–2, whereas that from 1958 to 2014 was greater by four-fifths, at 1.2 W m–2. Makes a bit of a mess of the claimed “linearity”, that.
Secondly, the linear trend on the global temperature anomalies since 1880 is 0.87 Cº, (Fig. 5), in response to 1.9 W m–2 of CO2 forcing. A doubling of CO2 concentration would give 3.7 W m–2 of CO2 forcing, according to the current official method.
Therefore, if there were a linear relation between CO2 forcing and temperature change (which there is not), and if all of the warming since 1750 were anthropogenic (which it was not), and if there were no major natural influences on temperature over the period (which there were) the warming in response to a CO2 doubling would be just 1.7 Cº, not the 2.33 Cº suggested in Professor Lovejoy’s caption.
Figure 5. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the HadCRUT4, GISS, and NCDC monthly mean global surface temperature anomalies from 1880-2014 is 0.87 Cº. The linearity is not particularly remarkable: the correlation coefficient is only 0.69. The oscillations of global temperature following the 60-year period of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation can be clearly seen.
There is demonstrably no linear relationship between the CO2 forcing, which increases monotonically, and global temperature change, which is stochastic. Global temperature change is more closely related to changes in the great ocean oscillations in the short term (Fig. 6), in total sunlight hours at the surface in the medium term (Fig. 7), and in total solar irradiance in the long term (Fig. 8).
Figure 6. The remarkable non-linearity of global temperature change since 1890, showing the two periods of global warming that coincided remarkably with the two positive phases of the naturally-occurring Pacific Decadal Oscillation over the period.
Figure 7. The remarkable non-linearity of global temperature change in the South China Sea, 1880 to 2008, tracking a remarkable non-linearity in the number of sunshine hours in Japan. Not all pyrometer records show this correspondence: but the Japanese record is the longest we have, and one of the most meticulously kept.
Figure 8. The remarkable non-linearity of the sunspot record, 1600-2003, from Hathaway et al., (2004). Inset: The remarkable non-linearity of global temperature trend, 1659-2010. The first and most rapid of the three periods (red) of global warming since 1659 (1694-1733) occurred as solar activity began to recover at the end of the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715). The other two periods (1925-1946 and 1977-2000) occurred at the solar Grand Maximum (1925-1995).
Next, Professor Lovejoy makes the startling assertion that the probability that what he calls “rare, extreme fluctuations” in global temperature such as those of the 20th century were natural is 1:1000 to 1:10,ooo.
This is where his omission of any reference to the Central England Temperature Record, or to the Utrecht or Prague temperature records, or to the historical circumstances (the freezing of the Thames, of the Dutch canals, of the Hudson in New York), is so reprehensible.
The rapid warming at the transition from the Maunder Minimum to a more normal climate occurred well before the industrial revolution began. It was not our fault.
Or Professor Lovejoy could have gone back to 1421, at the time when global temperature began to tip downward into the Little Ice Age. An interesting letter in the Vatican archive from the Papal Legate in Greenland to the Secretariat of State reported that the Legate regretted that he could not take up his appointment because “the ice is come in from the north”. Suddenly, ships could not reach Greenland.
By now, anyone who has studied the climate ought to have realized that what Professor Lovejoy calls “rare, extreme fluctuations” are neither rare nor extreme. They are the norm, not the exception.
Moreover, the entire interval of global temperature change since 1750, from the depth of the Maunder minimum to the acme during the Great El Niño of 1988 represents a movement of just 0.9% in absolute mean global surface temperature. By contrast, the change between midday and midnight at one location can be as much as 20% of absolute mean temperature. And the interval between the hottest and coldest places on Earth represents close to half of absolute mean temperature.
Next, the Professor says: “But what about Medieval warming with vineyards in Britain, or the so-called Little Ice Age with skating on the Thames? In the historical past, the temperature has changed considerably. Surely, the industrial-epoch warming is just another large-amplitude natural event?”
He answers his question in the negative, saying large-scale changes can only occur over periods much longer than a century. He would have gotten a nasty surprise if he had been around at the end of the Younger Dryas cooling event 11,400 years ago. At that time, according to the ice cores, the temperature in Antarctica rose by 5 Cº in just three years. As Professor Ian Plimer puts it, “Now, that’s climate change!”
Next, Professor Lovejoy writes: “My result focuses on the probability of centennial-scale temperature changes. It does not exclude large changes, if they occur slowly enough. So if you must, let the peons roast and the Thames freeze solid, the result stands.” No, it doesn’t. Just look at the warming of 1694-1733: 1.7 Cº in just 40 years, a rate equivalent to 4.33 Cº/century.
The Q&A that Professor Lovejoy has issued to prop up his paper says that he regards any change of more than 0.25 Cº over 125 years as exceptional, and likely to occur only 10% of the time. No, it isn’t. As I pointed out in a previous posting, more than a third of all 125-year periods predating the onset of anthropogenic influence on climate in 1950 show warming or cooling of more than 0.25 Cº.
Figure 9. Left: The misleading propaganda claim made by “Skeptical” “Science” that 97% of scientists agree we are the cause of global warming. Right: The true position exposed by Legates et al. (2013): 99.5% of 11,944 climate-science papers did not say we are the cause. They did not even say we are the primary cause.
Next, Professor Lovejoy says IPeCaC has “strengthened its earlier 2007 qualification of ‘likely’ to ‘extremely likely’ that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Yes, it has, but it has done so not only on no evidence but in the teeth of the evidence.
As Legates et al. (2013) demonstrated, 99.5% of 11,944 scientific papers on climate published between 1991 and 2011 did not say that most of the global warming since 1950 was caused by us (Figure 9).
Besides, since Professor Lovejoy’s paper plays with statistics a great deal, he should know that no recognizable statistical process performed on any actual dataset (unless science now recognizes a show of hands among scientifically-illiterate, rent-seeking representatives of governments) generated IPeCaC’s “95-99% confidence” value.
Next, the Professor asserts that “skeptics … insist that warming results from natural variability”. No, we don’t. We assert that in the present state of knowledge it is impossible adequately to distinguish between natural variability and anthropogenic influence.
The Professor digs his hole ever deeper: “The new GCM-free approach rejects natural variability, leaving the last vestige of skepticism in tatters.” Here is an honest version of that sentence: “I reject natural variability aprioristically, so I bished and bashed the numbers till they fitted my preconception, leaving the last vestige of my scientific credibility in tatters.”
Yet he rants blithely on to the effect that the Canadian government has “axed climate research” (hurrah!); that it gave him no funding for his research (so he got more than he deserved); that it has “shamelessly promoted the dirtiest fuels” (but CO2 is not dirty, it is the stuff of life); that it has “reneged on its international climate obligations” (no, it took lawful and timeous advantage of the opt-out clause in the Kyoto Protocol and, therefore, has no “international climate obligations”); that “two decades of international discussion have failed to prevent emissions from growing” (along with crop yields and net primary productivity of trees and plants, thanks to CO2 fertilization); and, finally, that “the world needs to drop the skepticism and change course – humanity’s future depends on it” (but, as T.H. Huxley said, to the scientist “skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin”, and whenever someone says humanity’s future depends on something he means his income depends on it).
I am grateful to Mr Marler, Mr Bofill and Mr Berple for pointing out that missingthepointharlani (if he does not want me to make fun of his name, yet him use his real one rather than skulking behind a pseudonym) has gone too far.
He says the Ipswichian interglacial (which he knows as the Eemian) “lasted longer” than the Holocene. However, I have surely made it plain enough that what concerns me, as it should concern every policymaker, is how long the most recent interglacials endured at temperatures at or greater than the present: for it is colder weather, not warmer weather, that is the real killer. That is why I dated the present interglacial as having endured for 11,400 (or, on some authorities, 11,700) years at or above today’s temperatures.
On that, which was my declared basis all along, let us examine how long the Ipswichian interglacial endured at or above today’s temperatures. The answer, according to the graph from Petit et al. on which I relied, is that the Ipswichian, thus defined, endured for appreciably less time than the Holocene has endured. The two interglacials before that also endured for appreciably less time. The interglacial before that may have endured for a longer time, but from the peak temperature to the beginning of the precipitate decline from temperatures equivalent to today’s even that interglacial was shorter than the present one.
So I had reason for my passing remark to the effect that we were 5000 years overdue for the next Ice Age, and it is childish of misanthropeharlani to go on and on and on and on insisting that I was wrong. As he now knows well, I wasn’t wrong: I had an opinion that differed from his own, and that is all. There are of course other ways of measuring the endurance of an interglacial, but the policy-relevant method I used was quite reasonable, even if he would rather I had used a method more congenial to his own preconceptions.
Mathchallengedharlani also makes the elementary mistake of not appreciating that the four cyclical periods he mentioned contain several mutually prime factors. His assertion that a particular interglacial 400,000 years ago was a better guide to the present interglacial than its three successors depends on that mistake, which is akin to the “biorhythm” scam of a couple of decades ago.
Besides, the individual impact of the various phases of the Milankovich cycles on the glacial cycles on Earth is simply not understood well enough to allow him to draw with certainty any conclusion to the effect that the interglacial of 400,000 years ago may prove a better guide to the future endurance of the present interglacial than the three subsequent interglacials.
He is entitled to his opinion, and he may – or may not – be right: but, frankly, there is altogether insufficient evidence at this stage for him to assert, viciously, persistently, and in terms that have fallen well short of any reasonable standard of courtesy, that I am wrong.
Sorry this is a bit off topic but Steven Mosher’s first comment about maths and the physical world got me thinking the whole subject of mathematics and modelling chaotic multivariable systems and if it was possible a good statistician would be a multi-billionaire. Here’s why:
The UK national lottery comprises 49 balls. All you need to do is predict which 6 are picked. A binary condition, picked or not. We can easily calculate that the chances, assuming each ball has an equal chance, of being right are:
49*48*47*46*45*44:1
That is certain. A truth.
We have a 20 year history of what balls have been picked and in which order with 100% certainty. So why can’t we say what will happen in the draw tomorrow? The answer is that the balls do not have a memory and the past does not predict the future. I do know ball number 50 or 32.5 will never come out but I do not know that exactly the same balls that were drawn on Wednesday will be drawn tomorrow.
Applying this to climate predictions we have an immensely more complex system where the number of balls is represented by the factors determining the climate, I don’t think we can enumerate these. The outcomes are not binary but somewhere on a continuum. The certainty over the historic record is less than 100% certain, proxies and historically low precision instruments mean that any model has uncertain input. And the weather doesn’t have a memory either. There is no controlling force saying it was warm yesterday so it will be warmer/colder/the same today.
Unless you can predict the outcome of the lottery (a much simpler more constrained system) the effort of trying to predict the climate system is all nugatory effort.
I recognise that this is naïve and an argument reductio ad absurdum but it helps me sleep at night 😉
I am in the camp that believes that increased CO2 concentrations will warm the world and that human activity contributes to the CO2 concentrations. I also believe that there are negative feedbacks and buffering systems that are in the realms of magic as they cannot be described, quantified or explained. I also believe that humans are not outside nature, and nature will deal with us as she will.
I expect to be shouted at. It’s ok, my back is broad 😉
Trolls are succeeding in their purpose if they are absorbing your time, energy & expertise.
Best not to feed the buggers?
Thus they starve & die.
I’d like to put up this 1974 CIA report on climate for study here, & ask a bold question.
Is it possible that the whole CAGW/CC/WW hoax is a gigantic red herring?
Bearing in mind that both a moderate warming & CO2 increase are beneficial, & that cold kills,
as we see proven every winter in the UK, is it possible that the scam all along has been to divert our attention from a very possibly fast approaching killer ice age?
We do know that a prime “Green”, 1%s, agenda 21 objective is a vastly reduced World Population, back to so-called “sustainable” (actually, controllable) levels, in their envisaged “Hunger Games” paradise.
Steps back to await derision & abuse by the bucketload. 🙂
Ref: http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
Mr Marcus says:
“The UK national lottery comprises 49 balls. All you need to do is predict which 6 are picked. A binary condition, picked or not. We can easily calculate that the chances, assuming each ball has an equal chance, of being right are 49.48.47.46.45.44 : 1. That is certain. A truth.”
Actually, that is certainly incorrect. An untruth. For the U.K. numbers racket pays out without regard to the sequence of the numbers selected. The correct probability P of matching all six numbers, therefore, is 720 times greater than Mr Marcus had thought. It is given by
P = (43! 6!) / 49! = (6.5.4.3.2.1) / (49.48.47.46.45.44) = 1 / 13,983,816.
Mr Marcus’ point that it is difficult to quantify temperature feedbacks is, however, sound. It is feedbacks (whether positive or negative) that introduce the largest of many uncertainties into the calculation.
In the absence of feedbacks, the warming to be expected in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration is the product of the instantaneous climate sensitivity parameter lambda-zero and the CO2 radiative forcing delta-F. Delta-F is itself the product of a constant k and the natural of the proportionate change (C/C0) in CO2 concentration, where C0 is the unperturbed or initial concentration.
The instantaneous or zero-feedbacks climate-sensitivity parameter, also known as the Planck parameter, is the product of a latitudinal-adjustment coefficient j and the first differential T/(4F) of the fundamental equation of radiative forcing, where T is the mean temperature at the altitude at which incoming and outgoing fluxes of radiation are by definition equal, and F = S(1 – alpha) / 4 is the incoming radiative flux at the same altitude after allowing for albedo (alpha) and for the relative surface areas of the rotating sphere of the Earth and of the disk that the Earth presents to the Sun, where S is total incoming solar irradiance.
Putting numbers on all this, the mean effective temperature T at the characteristic-emission altitude is 255 K; the incoming irradiance S is 1362 Watts per square meter; and the mean Earth albedo or reflectance alpha is 0.3. Accordingly, F = 238.4 Watts per square meter, and the differential T/(4 F) is 0.267 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, and the latitudinal-adjustment coefficient is about 7/6, so that the Planck parameter is 0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter.
The coefficient k in the CO2 radiative forcing function is 5.35, so the radiative forcing at CO2 doubling is 5.35 ln(2), or 3.7 Watts per square meter.
Multiplying the forcing by the Planck parameter gives a net warming at CO2 doubling of less than 1.2 K in the absence of feedbacks.
The IPCC multiplies this by about 3 to allow for net-positive feedbacks: but there is remarkably little sound basis for any such feedback gain factor, and there are powerful theoretical reasons why a value anywhere like as high as 3 is impossible.
The difference between the skeptics and the true-believers, therefore, is that the true-believers insist, on little evidence, that temperature feedbacks are likely to be very strongly net-positive, while the skeptics, on much theoretical as well as empirical evidence, consider that temperature feedbacks are likely to be net-zero or possibly even net-negative. Hope this helps.
David Ramsay Steele: Lovejoy used the phrase “proved beyond reasonable doubt”. This is legal terminology. It has no place in logic or mathematics. We do not prove a mathematical theorem beyond reasonable doubt. We either prove it or we don’t.
This discussion is interesting philologically as well as epistemologically. Lovejoy used the word “prove” but Lord Monckton used the word “demonstrate”. Long ago I read something like “A demonstration is used to persuade a reasonable man, but a proof is used to persuade an unreasonable man.” There is a play on the use of “reasonable” here, since the proof is based on logic and mathematics, which are subsets of reasoning. Proof, prove and cognates such as “proving ground”, “the proof of the pudding is in the taste”, and “proofread” have a long history of multiple meanings, of which “logical proof” and “mathematical proof” are restricted or selected meanings. The “legal” terminology “proved beyond a reasonable doubt” is much more widespread in use than just petit trials (in grand jury trials the indictment is based on a different standard, somewhat more than “probable cause”, something like “a reasonable case actually exists”), whereas “logical proof” and “mathematical proof” are more restrictive.
Lord Monckton has a different etymological note on “empirical”. Empiricism and theory usually can’t be distinguished in practice because most “observations” (e.g. temperature) depend on estimated theoretical relationships within a theoretical model. Even the notion that two phenomena are both “cats” is a theoretical generalization. Most such distinctions (“sense data” vs “theoretical constructs”) break down when you think about them a while.
I think my characterization, that almost all physicists accept that Newton’s laws have been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt to be accurate to within very tiny limits, is probably pretty accurate. And Einstein’s laws have been demonstrated beyond a reasonable to be accurate to within even tinier limits. They have been proved, proofed and tested too many times for anyone to have time to count.
Mathematical proofs are only valid in worlds that have human like thought. What other worlds might be like is hard to imagine, but our thought processes are unique to some of us here on Earth in this universe, as far as we can tell.
When we’re talking about the meanings of words, etymology is not dispositive. Indeed, the meaning of a word can even change into its opposite as the centuries go by. The standard usage of “empirical” in philosophy (including especially philosophy of science) is the evidence of our senses as contrasted with the evidence of reasoning, what observation tells us rather than what theoretical deduction tells us. Thus, the standard classification is that mathematics is not empirical science. Of course, one can depart from standard terminology and propose a new terminology, and one can even hold the unusual theory (as another poster here does) that mathematics is really about physical objects rather than abstract objects. However one still has to acknowledge the differences between science and mathematics, one being that in math there is proof and in science there is no “proof” in the same sense, but only disproof or refutation (or, in the opinion of non-Popperians, such as Bayesians, enhanced or diminished probability). And, more to the point, having adopted a non-standard classification, it’s not playing fair to assume that someone one is criticizing is familiar with it. Lovejoy was talking about science, in the normal English sense of that term to mean empirical science, excluding mathematics, and it is therefore not a refutation of his claim to give a mathematical counter-instance.
Incidentally, there has been talk here (not from his lordship) about Newton and Einstein both being proved beyond reasonable doubt. This is ironic, in view of the facts that if Einstein is true, Newton is false, and also that neither Newton nor Einstein believed in the truth of their theories. Newton couldn’t bring himself to believe in action at a distance, and Einstein always thought relativity theory, while a better approximation to the truth than Newton, would eventually be replaced by a better theory.
– – – – – – – – – –
george e. smith,
If you are implying that human derived concepts cannot be capable of knowing reality, then your concepts by definition cannot be sufficient to establish your case of the non-reality of the basis your conception of mathematics. N’est ce pas.
Let’s not play dual reality / dual knowledge hands. It is so Post Modern and Post Normal.
As to creativity stimulation, we do not need dual world / dual knowledge incorrectness for it. But if one wants that as a stimulation for creativity, it is a free society, ‘swallow’ it (swallowing being your terminology not mine).
John
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 25, 2014 at 2:35 am
Apparently you didn’t read the comment in which I told you my name or that in which I signed as John Tillman. Since I comment under it often, some here already knew it.
I’m happy to let you have the last word on the issue of when the Holocene is liable to end, although no one knows whether it is already thousands of years overdue, as your arithmetic operation on one way of looking at interglacials suggests to you, or likely to last for tens of thousands of years more, as some scientists forecast based upon the orbital mechanics which have worked for the past 2.4 million years. As noted, my own WAG is that the Holocene has only several hundred to a few thousand years left, based upon the Bond Cycles which Dr. Svalgaard considers imaginary.
I’d like to take up your suggestion that I write a post on interglacials, but don’t have the time now & our host might not want it anyway. I do thank you for championing skepticism about CACA.
Make that more like 2.6 million years, or about a million years ago if counting from the periodicity switch.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 25, 2014 at 6:03 am
Lord Monckton
Thanks for spending so much time on my slightly frivolous post
a) in correcting my faulty maths
b) in explaining the forcing less feedbacks
I owe you a pint. (at least one)
David Ramsay Steele: Incidentally, there has been talk here (not from his lordship) about Newton and Einstein both being proved beyond reasonable doubt. This is ironic, in view of the facts that if Einstein is true, Newton is false, and also that neither Newton nor Einstein believed in the truth of their theories.
I don’t know about others, but I wrote that they have been demonstrated to be accurate, with known degrees of accuracy, beyond reasonable doubt. For Newton’s laws, for example, the demonstrations that they are accurate include satellite and interplanetary navigation. Scientific methods can be used to determine whether propositions are accurate, with respect to publicly debatable standards of accuracy, or useful, with publicly debatable standards of utility, but not whether they are true or false.
“Paradoxical though it may seem, the fundamental idea in the exact sciences is the idea of approximation” — Bertrand Russell. The ideas of approximation and accuracy are too little discussed in works by Kuhn and others, imo. The “world view” of Einstein replaced the “world view” of Newton and successors through Maxwell, but the previous laws did not lose their accuracy or usefulness.
He also wrote “Mathematics is the field in which we never know what we are talking about nor whether anything we say is true or false.”
When we’re talking about the meanings of words, etymology is not dispositive. Indeed, the meaning of a word can even change into its opposite as the centuries go by. The standard usage of “empirical” in philosophy (including especially philosophy of science) is the evidence of our senses as contrasted with the evidence of reasoning, what observation tells us rather than what theoretical deduction tells us.
I agree that etymology is not dispositive, but what you call the “standard” usage of “empirical” falls apart when you consider the usage of “empirical” for data such as temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, voltage, pH, and just about everything else that depends on a theory for its generation. You can’t even record that you observed a bee, a foot, a rock, or a cat without the conceptualization; much less the time and location at which you observed it.
Math and science are fundamentally different in a very important aspect: in science we have to look at reality and then give explanations, usually enlisting the aid of mathematics as a coherent language in which to frame our explanations. But mathematics is done in many other situations beyond science.
In science we experiment. We go into the “real world,” observe phenomena, go back to the drawing table, and try to explain these phenomena. Then we go back out to the world, see if we can predict a new phenomenon before it happens.
This, in general, is what we call the “scientific method.”
Mathematics is different. Mathematics requires proof for new truths, and it’s very picky about what it considers proof to be. For a scientist, a number (ten or maybe 100) experiments with consistent results might constitute proof, “within experimental error.” For a mathematician, no number of successful experiments is enough proof. Instead, we rely on logic.
While mathematics is very often inspired by nature, it is a purely intellectual pursuit. It is just a bunch of ideas in our heads, like philosophy. There is no “real world” to supply correction via falsification to our mathematics. Even when inspired by nature, e.g. Newton’s law of gravity given above, the mathematical derivation can be correct, but the physics falsified as it was.
LM and I differ on whether mathematics is a science. Mathematics as a “systematic and formulated knowledge” has much in common with science, but most people use “science” to refer only to the natural sciences. Most mathematicians do not consider themselves to be scientists and vice versa. So, after all the discussion it finally emerges that LM’s real objection is that Prof. Lovejoy (as do I) use science to mean natural science. Make that change to Lovejoy’s statement in my original comment — see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/23/the-empire-of-the-viscount-strikes-back/#comment-1620061 — and LM’s objection must disappear, at least LM’s guide Popper would think so.
So, I must apologize to LM for not really understanding that his objection to Lovejoy’s statement was that its use of science was not what LM’s expansive (and untypical) use was.
However, it seems that I should apologize also for the lack of clarity in my comment “no mathematician looks to the telescope or the microscope to obtain observations to falsify his mathematics,” at April 23, 2014 at 11:24 pm not grasped by LM as he blathered on about how telescopes were used to verify Einstein’s theory in physics — see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/23/the-empire-of-the-viscount-strikes-back/#comment-1620345 — completely missing the point of my comment about mathematics by citing a law in physics. I’m really sorry that LM was so confused by my word “mathematician.”
I probably also apologize for not grasping the finer points that Popper made about how theories in science cannot be proved, only falsified. Since LM cites Popper to justify himself, I’m really at a loss to under his claim that Einstein’s law was “verified” (proved true) unless LM meant “checked.” And if he meant checked, how would LM’s comment have any bearing on “falsifying mathematics?
I apologize for concluding in these, and other, cases that LM employs tactics that include personal attacks, assertions for which he has no justification, changing the topic to set a straw-man, and using terms with a narrow meaning not commonly held.
Friends:
At April 24, 2014 at 8:49 am Monckton of Brenchley said:
I use a similar definition; viz.
A troll is one who attempts to prevent discussion of the subject by deflecting a thread onto other subject(s).
The subject of this thread was the attempt by Lovejoy to refute the rebuttal of Monckton of the paper by Lovejoy which claims his “CO2 proxy … predicts with 95 percent certainty that a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere will lead to a warming of 1.9 to 4.2 Cº”.
Trolls attempted disruption by attempting to side-track the thread with irrelevant falsehoods which have included
socialists are naz1s,
eugenics was a left-wing ideology
Monckton of Brenchley claimed mathematics and science are the same thing,
the probable end of the recent interglacial is determinable,
etc.
I am saddened that the trolls have had complete success in this thread according to the definition of trolls provided by Monckton of Brenchley or by me.
Richard
Mr Lee rambles offensively. He has been caught out in repeated falsehoods in this thread, and shamelessly continues. He has a poor grasp of language, of science, of mathematics, of morality, and of truth.
But here, in case he has succeeded in misleading anyone about whether the scientific method applies in mathematics, is a quotation from the textbook of theoretical knowledge by Vyacheslav Stepin:
“Transfer to science in the strict meaning of this word was connected with two critical conditions of developing culture and civilization. First came changes in the culture of the ancient world that applied the scientific method in mathematics and elevated it to the level of theoretical investigation. Next came changes in European culture during the Renaissance and the transition to the new age, when the scientific method of thinking became a property of the natural sciences, the main purpose being understood as using experiment as a method for studying nature, combining the mathematical method with experiment and observation to form the theoretical basis of the natural sciences.”
“Applied the scientific method in mathematics”. There you have it.
Mr Lee might also read Frege on the scientific method in mathematics, and then think a little before pretending to knowledge that he does not in fact possess.
Richard Courtney is quite right that the trolls have indeed succeeded in derailing this thread, as they so often do, but three or four of them have taken such a pasting that they will not be likely to try being so silly again in a hurry, particularly because their idiocies are being archived by the Lord Monckton Foundation as permanent and telling evidence of the sullenly militant and yet haplessly cretinous feeble-mindedness that we are determined to extirpate before it destroys the West.
I can produce new head postings faster than the trolls can derail the discussion threads. But at least they can take a perverse pride in knowing that their willful stupidities and viciousnesses will inform future generations as hilarious examples of the petulant, small-minded and destructive irrationality that the ultimate collapse of the climate scare will help us to bring to an end, perhaps forever.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 25, 2014 at 2:01 pm
Richard Courtney is quite right that the trolls have indeed succeeded in derailing this thread, as they so often do, but three or four of them have taken such a pasting that they will not be likely to try being so silly again in a hurry, particularly because their idiocies are being archived by the Lord Monckton Foundation as permanent and telling evidence of the sullenly militant and yet haplessly cretinous feeble-mindedness that we are determined to extirpate before it destroys the West.
I can produce new head postings faster than the trolls can derail the discussion threads. But at least they can take a perverse pride in knowing that their willful stupidities and viciousnesses will inform future generations as hilarious examples of the petulant, small-minded and destructive irrationality that the ultimate collapse of the climate scare will help us to bring to an end, perhaps forever.
***************************************************
Now this is what’s hilarious. Yes, Monckton of Brenchley, various technologies and the internet have created “permanent and telling evidence” for future reference. Those capabilities are frequently not your friend, not now and not when interested members of future generations take the time to revisit the past.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 25, 2014 at 2:01 pm
A good troll doesn’t recognize it has been pasted.
They crave attention, the best way to annoy them is to ignore them.
Ref: Theoretical Knowledge, By Vyacheslav S. Stepin
Gee, on page 127 of the LM’s reference above, Stepin writes: “For example, the ideal of the experimental verification of theories is absent in mathematics, but it is obligatory for the empirical sciences.”
And here I thought that “experimental verification of theories” was a key component of the scientific method. How can that be? Maybe Stepin agrees with me more than LM thinks.
Oh, here it is in your quote from p. 23:
“. . . the main purpose being understood as using experiment as a method for studying nature, combining the mathematical method with experiment and observation to form the theoretical basis of the natural sciences.” Notice that Stepin writes “combining the mathematical method with experiment and observation” as an action in the study of nature note “with”.
Now I realize that LM doesn’t get subtle points, so I’ll redraft using also the p. 127 quote:
1. The scientific method, which includes experimental verification of theories, is absent in mathematics,
2. the mathematical method is combined with experiment and observation to form the theoretical basis of the natural sciences.
All in all LM, you will have do better in your search for a quote to support your position about math and the scientific method. But do search what mathematicians say about their discipline.
sorry my quote is from p. 126, not 127 — typo.
Philip Lee: In attacking the claim by Prof. Lovejoy that in the scientific method “no theory ever can be proven beyond ‘reasonable doubt’”. Lord Monckton should know better to cite that “it is possible to demonstrate the Theorem of Pythagoras.” This theorem belongs to mathematics and is not a topic subject to the scientific method, no matter how useful scientists may find it.
I think the problem began with “the” in “the scientific method” in your last sentence quoted above. Since derivations from assumptions are for sure among the scientific methods , and because propositions derived as abstractions (C. S. Peirce called them “abductions”) and then used as axioms are also among the scientific methods, your sentence as written claimed too much.
“. . . the main purpose being understood as using experiment as a method for studying nature, combining the mathematical method with experiment and observation to form the theoretical basis of the natural sciences.”
That was how you ended, clearly more refined than where you began.
Matthew R Marler says:
April 25, 2014 at 7:51 pm
‘I think the problem began with “the” in “the scientific method”’
Maybe so, thanks for the point.
In my defense I’ll note the use of “the” as I have is common when referring to a particular body of techniques. Einstein use the term in a paper about “the scientific method.” I copied that paper about 50 years ago and lost my copy. I’ve not been able to find the source again. I remember his paper because of its clarity. Still you can see the usage at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method .
When used in this way “the scientific method” refers to collection of steps which are applied in science to test for truth. While evolving and varying for different sciences, “the method” always requires testing theory against observations of reality. So, “the scientific method” refers not to one of many methods of science, but to a guide for science itself.
But I like your thoughtful comment.
It’s hardly surprising that “IPeCaC” makes nauseating predictions is it ?
They most likely have been at the “Syrup of ipecac” or Ipecac Wine ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrup_of_ipecac
Mr Lee has not read my quotation from Vyacheslav Stepin with sufficient care. Stepin distinguishes two phases in the development of the scientific method. The earlier applied the scientific method in mathematics – he says as much. The later extended it to the sciences.
In the later passage cited by Mr Lee, Stepin introduces a third phase in which, he says, the various disciplines have become specialized. As an example, he says experimental verification of theories is absent in mathematics.
Let us suppose for now, ad argumentum and per impossibile, that he is right in that last statement. Then there was a period – the first phase – during which the scientific method was applied in mathematics, for he said so in the earlier passage I had cited, but we now live in a period – the third phase – during which one particular aspect of the scientific method, the experimental verification of hypotheses, is absent.
As I have already explained, hypotheses may be verified by methods other than experiment. The scientific method as codified by Popper does not restrict verification to experiment. Testing against theory is available too. Stepin is not, therefore, saying that the scientific method no longer applies in mathematics as once it did. He is putting forward a hypothesis – eagerly seized by Mr Lee as he clings in desperation to his own narrow and unwarrantable view of the scientific method – that mathematics does not at present use experiment to verify its conjectures (“conjecture” in mathematics being synonymous with “hypothesis”).
Let us, then, apply the scientific method to the Lee-Stepin hypothesis. Now, it is a useful characteristic of the scientific method that if a hypothesis be demonstrated to be false it must fail. It is necessary only for me to present a single counter-example demonstrating that the experimental verification of hypotheses is present in mathematics, and that is the end of Mr Lee’s hypothesis.
In fact, as I have already mentioned upthread, mathematics is full of hypotheses that were demonstrated to be false by the experimental method of finding counter-examples rather than by any deduction from the postulates or induction upon them.
I was able to disprove a hypothesis of Fermat connected to the Mersenne primes by this method, taking advantage of a method relying on Gaussian congruences to assist in the identification of the prime factors of one of a class of numbers that Fermat had hypothesized were always prime. I was not the first to do this, but – albeit using the laws of mathematics to refine my search – I had to experiment as those who had gone before me had done until I found the prime factors of the number in question, disproving Fermat’s hypothesis. That counter-example is, of course, also a counter-example to the notion that experimentation has no place in science.
Just to recap on the semantics, the word “empirical” – from the Greek “empeirien”, to try, simply means “by trial or testing”. There is nothing in the word, and nothing in the concept as applied to the scientific method, that requires a physical experiment on things that you can touch and see by using things that you can touch and see.
However, even if Mr Lee wishes to be as narrow-minded as to imagine that “experiment” must mean only material experiment, I can give – as I have already given – a counter-example to his hypothesis that uses material experiment. The four-colour theorem – that any planar map is four-colorable – could not be decided by the usual deductive or inductive methods of mathematics.
Accordingly, in 1977 two researchers devised a complex proof involving the identification and examination by computer of 1476 distinct map regions, represented for convenience by networks, in order to establish that no counter-example to the four-color hypothesis is possible.
A more recent proof – from Georgia Tech, if I remember rightly – reduced the number of distinct regions requiring inspection to 633, and the number of rules for examining each region from more than 300 to a couple of dozen. This proof demonstrates that there are no possible counter-examples to what is now known as the four-color theorem, but it does so by experiment on multiple regions in the plane. And before anyone quibbles about whether a plane in the Euclidean sense actually exists, the proof of the four-color theorem works just as well on a plane somewhat deformed by gravity as on the ideal planar surface.
So Stepin was insufficiently exact in his assertion that one of the methods of testing a hypothesis – namely, experiment – is not available in mathematics. By these counter-examples, and by many others I could mention, I have demonstrated that experiment is available and, in some instances, at present the only method available.
And even if it were to be argued in desperation that a map of a region is not the region itself and, therefore, that the experiment that demonstrated the four-color conjecture is not a “real” experiment, I have already covered that base by explaining that the word “empirical” does not require the experimentation to be physical. It simply means “by trial” – or, as it is often described, “by trial and error”.
Accordingly, Mr Lee’s hypothesis is demonstrated to be false. Empirical methods are both available and sometimes essential in mathematics, as anyone with a sufficient knowledge of the subject – or anyone who had actually read my earlier comments upthread and had thought about them before galloping sneeringly onto the attack – would know.
See this presentation Monckton gave a couple of years ago.
Professor Lovejoy and others should have paid some heed to the
fact that these bogus techniques & frauds were already exposed thus :-
“The Heavy Cost of a Non-Problem”
Ric Werme:
At April 25, 2014 at 5:47 pm you say to Monckton of Brenchley:
I wish that you were right, but – sadly – you are mistaken.
Trolls attempt to mislead onlookers.
So, trolls make untrue and often inflammatory assertions. Ignoring the assertions allows them to stand so the assertions can mislead onlookers. But discussing the assertions deflects from – so prevents – true consideration of the proper subject of a thread.
The “best way” to deal with trolls is to assess when it is “best” to ignore their assertions and when it is better to refute the assertions.
For example, the assertion in this thread that naz1s were socialists was ignored because it is completely irrelevant to the thread and is so laughably untrue that only idiots could be misled by it.
However, another troll misrepresented Monckton’s illustration from geometry, and the misrepresentation needed to be refuted because it could infer doubt concerning one of Monckton’s points and, hence, provide doubt to all his points.
In summation, the problem posed by trolls is not simple and this thread provides a useful ‘case study’ for future reference. As Monckton of Brenchley says at April 25, 2014 at 2:01 pm
Ignoring trolls assists the trolls in their “willful stupidities and viciousnesses” which result from their “sullenly militant and yet haplessly cretinous feeble-mindedness that we are determined to extirpate before it destroys the West“.
Monckton of Brenchley and I have very different political views but we are united by our defence against that attack on “the West” which is exemplified by the ridiculous paper from Lovejoy and the attempts to hide exposure of that paper’s faults provided in this thread by the trolls.
Richard