From the Carnegie Institution and the department of feelings, quite possibly the dumbest press release about climate I’ve ever seen. basically what they are arguing for is “don’t look at current and past data go with what we tell you” aka trust us, we are paid climate scientists with a model.
Climate change: Don’t wait until you can feel it
Washington, D.C.— Despite overwhelming scientific evidence for the impending dangers of human-made climate change, policy decisions leading to substantial emissions reduction have been slow. New work from Carnegie’s Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira focuses on the intersection between personal and global impacts. They find that even as extreme weather events influence those who experience them to support policy to address climate change, waiting for the majority of people to live through such conditions firsthand could delay meaningful action by decades. Their findings are published by Nature Climate Change.
Nearly every year, extreme weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes spur the discussion of climate change in the media and among politicians. This can create a window of opportunity for those seeking to enact policy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But this window of opportunity could be delayed by decades due to the vagaries of weather.
“When support for doing something about climate change is based on personal observations of local weather, policymaking may end up being dictated by the roulette wheel of natural climate variability,” says Ricke.
Ricke and Calderia’s modeling studies show that within 50 years nearly every country in the world will experience the kind of extreme weather that can be a policy trigger. However, local natural variability in weather means that majority of people in each nation, particularly large countries like China and the United States, could personally experience these extremes for themselves either tomorrow or many years from now. If citizens do not support emissions reductions and other efforts to fight climate change until they experience extreme events firsthand, naturally-driven variations in weather could delay action by decades, Ricke and Caldeira found. They find that sound science should guide policy rather than the vagaries of weather. “Local weather is anecdotal information, but climate change is sound science,” Caldeira said. “Good politics can be based on a good anecdote, but good policy needs to be based on sound science.”
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I’m glad they find that sound science should guide policy.
Now all they need to do is look at the science.
They can start by reading WUWT.
reminds me of this:
16 April: NYT Dot Earth: Psychology: Andrew C. Revkin: A Risk Analyst Explains Why Climate Change Risk Misperception Doesn’t Necessarily Matter
David Ropeik, risk communication consultant and author of “How Risky is it, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts”: But this brings me to the second and more profound issue. Most climate change communication, like Showtime’s Years of Living Dangerously and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s What We Know campaign, websites like Climate Central and Real Climate, or academic programs like Yale’s Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, is predicated on the belief that if people know the facts about climate change and finally understand just how serious the problem is, they will surely raise their voices and demand that our governments and business leaders DO SOMETHING!
But I’m just not sure how much public concern matters. I don’t know how much we need to care how much people care…
Those policy makers, our leaders, are going to have to act, even without a huge public mandate…
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/a-risk-analyst-explains-why-climate-change-risk-misperception-doesnt-necessarily-matter/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog Main&contentCollection=psychology&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
Curious about the following in relation to ‘modelling studies’ of impending doom.
In a classical experiment I presume you could determine a causal relationship between x and y by observing what happens to the dependent variable, x (say temperature) when you make changes to the independent variable, y (say, CO2). You would also need to control other variables, z (z1, z2, …) that could influence the relationship between x and y.
Now, I assume a climate model does something like the classical experiment I have outlined above, but with assumed parameters (i.e. there is an assumed relationship between x and y etc.).
Now, where a model fails to match empirical observations and someone says, some variable z (‘aerosols’ or ‘black soot’) are repressing the relationship between x and y (i.e. although there has been an ‘exponential’ increase in co2 it’s not warming because aerosols are causing cooling, etc.), on what basis is an appropriate value for z determined? Is the value given to z basically just a fudge factor to suppress the supposedly known effect of the xy relationship and explain away the failure of the model to match reality?
Prediction based on the past. Everyone has experienced extreme weather events (i.e. variations from the norm for that time of year) during their lives, and they will continue to do so!! That’s why the weather is such a regular topic of conversation – too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy.
They find that sound science should guide policy rather than the vagaries of weather.
What’s not to like about that? Unfortunately (for them) it does rule out pretty much everything that Mann, Gleick, Jones etc. (you know, all the usual suspects) have ever said or done on the matter of ‘climate change’.
When any of these people actually do any sound science, maybe I’ll start listening. Until then …
Below are a few surprising views!
Lord Jim Apr 26 1:02am asks “Is the value given to z basically just a fudge factor to suppress the supposedly known effect of the xy relationship and explain away the failure of the model to match reality?. Yes. It’s the usual circular logic.
You could apply the same reasoning to between 1900 to 1950. It may not have triggered policy but the extremes were there. Here are two compilations of extreme weather events for 1935 and 1936. Imagine if 2014 and 2015 had those events? Policy makers would be giving birth to kittens.
People looked out the window for promised milder winters and could not feel it. People have decided to roll their eyes and get on with their lives. Wake me up when there is observed evidence in the peer review of global weather getting more extreme (trends) over the last 30 years at least. Bad weather is just bad weather.
@Jeff Alberts:
” SAMURAI says:
April 25, 2014 at 9:57 pm
The desperation of the left is palatable…”
“Perhaps you mean “palpable?”
True, but their desperation is tasty too…
These kinds of press releases are targeted to the under-thirty crowd. What do they know. Their whole lives they’ve been told every hurricane, every tornado, every drought, every flood is unprecedented and confirmation of AGW. Of course if one has paid attention for the last 60 years, you know it is business as usual. And then if you just do a little bit of research, you understand this kind of press release is pure bunk.
Well in Australia a few years of drought did trigger a policy – a policy of building desalination plants. Then Australia received Biblical floods, leading to the mothballing of those desal plants and the wasting of billions of Dollars. Australia has always been a land of extremes with several climate zones.
Unprecedented, “Biblical” Floods Inundate Australia
“Fourth desal plant mothballed. Billions more wasted”
The more stable the environment, the more emotional AGW reactions become. It’s tempting to analyze the climate change curves with the classic change curve http://agileinc.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/changecurve21.jpg.
I FEEL COLD !!!!
Talking about desperation, how about a Bollywood version of ‘years of living dangerously’? http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/24/bollywood-stars-highlight-climate-change-during-first-u-s-awards-ceremony/. Bob’s Burgers may extend global with reruns and all.
When I went to indoctrination studies in the 70’s, (otherwise known as school) the next ice-age was coming. I now tell the current youth about that and tell them they are not to be blamed for that. They are not to be blamed for warming either. It pleases them to know this. 😛
They keep coming back.
I’m like Patrick up there at 11:45 pm.
I can Feel Climate Change coming on right here and now.
It’s getting colder outside even from where I sit in front of this computer whereas only some 3 months ago it use to be quite warm out there at this time of the day.
Dang climate is changing all over again just like it has for every one of my 76 years.
Always around this time of the year it gets colder and then global warming sets in and it gets all hot and bothered all over again a few months later.
Dang Climate just can’t make up it’s mind at all.
There just has to be a climate models somewhere that will be able to tell us how to stop this damn climate jiggling all about and force it to settle down and make up it’s mind what it wants to do.
Maybe all those very, very clever Climate Scientists [ must use Capitals for these “Very Important Persons” ] with all their incredibly precise climate models will be able to work out what is wrong with my darn climate around here and convince it to make up it’s mind if it wants to be hot or cold or whatever and then stick to it..
After all they are “CLIMATE SCIENTISTS” and they have promoted the understanding that they and their science are not subject to the usual Laws of Nature that all the other businesses and the pursuit of riches by us humble working folk are.
And that the Climate scientists abilities of prophecy and their precise prescription for the right turning of the Climate Control Knob to give us the exact climate we desire should be, if we believe their own high opinion of themselves, quite within their capabilities of prediction and prescription.
[ The Somalis can go jump if they want it cooler and the Eskimos can do likewise if they want it warmer although I side with the Eskimos if those clever, clever Climate Scientists really want to know how us humble folk with all our lavish oblations to Climate Scientists feel down here at the foot of the towering ivory Climate Science totem pole.
Mike Jonas says:
April 26, 2014 at 1:48 am
Lord Jim Apr 26 1:02am asks “Is the value given to z basically just a fudge factor to suppress the supposedly known effect of the xy relationship and explain away the failure of the model to match reality?. Yes. It’s the usual circular logic.
—————————————————-
Thanks for the response. Not only is it circular, it is also unfalsifiable.
This is what an expensive science education at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard and MIT can do to your ability to think and speak clearly:
“We did an analysis in which deterministic citizens respond to a stochastic world that’s represented by global climate model projections. We analysed output from a large climate model ensemble and looked at how experiences with extreme temperature events might effect the timing of strong climate policy action. The social system in our analytic model is completely deterministic so the only differences between different simulation ensemble members are small perturbations in initial conditions of the simulation.”
“In science there is a dictum: don’t add an experiment to an experiment. Don’t make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don’t ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.”
Ben Bova
Jeff Alberts says:
April 25, 2014 at 10:30 pm
SAMURAI says:
April 25, 2014 at 9:57 pm
The desperation of the left is palatable…
Perhaps you mean “palpable”?
================================================
The alarmist forcing us to eat modeled Crap is never palatable..
And yes, the control agenda falling apart has them in a frenzy which is very palpable..
SO I guess you are both right… 🙂
How convenient. There’s no time to wait for proof of their predicitions.
Important to counter this propaganda by pointing out that extreme weather is not new, most older people know this already, not so much youngsters brought up in front of computer screens.
We’re stubborn, us Aussies. The Victorian inferno of 1851 (probably world history’s biggest) and the drought of the late 1830s which actually dried the Murrumbidgee couldn’t convince us. The horror El Ninos around 1790 were soon forgotten. Would you believe the Murrumbidgee flooded catastrophically in 1853, and the local aborigines said there had once been a flood eighteen feet higher…and we put it out of our minds. We had the world’s highest recognised storm surge from Cyclone Mahina in 1899…and we still weren’t convinced about climate change. And that was almost in the 20th century!
You see, lacking the advice of luminaries from the Carnegie (such a cool institutional name) us doofus Aussies have been putting all this stuff down to “the roulette wheel of natural climate variability”. How dumb are we. No wonder those “windows of opportunity” snap shut so quickly. But if our Green Betters persist with the neologisms and management-speak and academese, maybe something will sink in.
I think it’s really sad how we all just keep banging our heads against a wall all the time against this stuff. They get the oxygen of publicity whatever rubbish and scaremongering they put out and the more scary the better. It’s time we could get some real publicity to fight this dogma, what we need is adverts in papers telling people the facts not this rubbish.
I believe if everyone one who is sceptical about the IPPC and all the hanger on’s who promote this rubbish were subjected to some real Analysis then maybe they would have to be more careful in the future. What we need is an organisation who we as sceptic’s donate some money to so they can pay to have advertising which told people how the temp hasn’t gone up, what rubbish the hockey stick was, tell them how little CO2 is in the atmosphere, show them graphs to see we are coming out of an ice age.
If we just keep banging our heads against a wall while they don’t debate the subject and keep telling us more and more scary storey’s then I don’t think we will ever end this Scam.
I also believe if companies were convinced that there electric bills could be reduced if this green dogma was pulled back they might support the campaign as well.
I believe if we all pulled together it would have a real impact.
Here’s hoping one day this could happen imagine if they were forced to debate they would be S****** themselves, here’s hoping.
Caldeira has a track record on scares, he is one of the originators of the “Acid Oceans” hype:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/acid_seas.html
Jimbo says:
April 26, 2014 at 2:13 am
Unprecedented, “Biblical” Floods Inundate Australia.
My reaction to that one is B***S***.
The ignorance of the uninformed is showing and it is so bloody obvious.
That “ignorance” reference most definitely does not apply to you Jimbo.
The 1956 floods here in southern eastern Australia were a couple of metres higher than any flood since in the Murray Darling basin and were the result of, to quote from the Wiki “1956 Murray River floods ” entry.
______________
“The flood occurred due to higher than average rainfalls in Western Queensland and heavy rains in the proceeding three months in Murray catchment areas,[2] peaking at 12.3 metres at Morgan, South Australia.[2] Some areas were flooded up to 100 km from the natural flow of the river.
The flood was and still is considered the biggest flood in the recorded history of the River Murray and described as “the greatest catastrophe in South Australia’s history”.
____________________
&
http://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=1416
That was one heck of a flood as I can testify as I was chasing some skirt over in the South Australian Murray Bridge area at the time. [ no luck darn it ! ] and had a few days up and down the river to see the scale of the flooding.
But now it gets interesting for the proponents of extreme weather and for students of paleo events history.
That 1956 flood, immense as it was, was a bit of a tiddler compared to a flood around the 1750 or about 38 years before Capt Arthur Phillips “First Fleet” landed at Sydney Cove on the 26th January 1788.
The Murray River flood of around 1750 which has been researched by Uni of South Australia students was about twice the size in water volume compared to the so far unmatched during white settlement by a very long ways, colossal 1956 Murray River flood.
The 1750 flood
From ; http://w3.unisa.edu.au/news/media2002/130902.htm
“the palaeoflood reached a maximum height on the River Murray at Overland Corner of 18.01 metres, making it greater than the largest flood on record, rising 2.11 metres above the 1956 flood height”
“Having measured the cross-section of the river, they applied the Manning Equation to determine the discharge of the prehistoric flood. This was estimated to be 7,686 cubic metres per second, almost double the discharge of the 1956 flood, which measured 3,950 cubic metres per second,” Professor Bourman said.”
So the predictors of the catastrophic climate extremes really should be aware of their level of total ignorance of past weather events and and known paleo weather created events BEFORE they start making totally unsupported and ultimately completely wrong, misleading and incorrect allegations of extreme weather occurring due to their completely unproven, supposed and claimed human influences on the global climate.
We had an old rural saying;
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
To paraphase for the climate catastrophists.
You can lead a climate catastrophists to the truth but like that obstinate horse, you can’t make them believe that truth
.