Guest Posting by Ira Glickstein
John Coleman (Co-Founder of The Weather Channel) made a comment on my: earlier WUWT posting “Ira, please make a video that presents the counter argument so I can put the two videos together for a You Tube “gotcha”. This guy is getting lots of hits and needs to be answered on You Tube.”
Here it is!
Comments will be appreciated.
Ira Glickstein
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I hope another video is posted incorporating some the the commenters’ suggestions.
John Coleman says: May 18, 2014 at 10:06 pm
THANKS John for motivating me to do the You Tube video. It was fun.
I’d love to see you do some videos on your daily blog.
Click here for John’s Daily Blog: http://johncolemanweather.com/daily-blog/
Ira
Dare we hope Marker Guy puts up a rebuttal?
It’d be fun fun to see him handed his butt again.
Thanks for this analysis. 🙂 I especially enjoyed the observation that box 1 and 3 are contradictory.
However, I don’t think the people who will be taken in by this video will care about the logical fallacy. The people who accept this video KNOW the middle is being left out…and they don’t care. They believe that by comparing only the extremes, and ignoring the odds, they can make valid decisions.
When this video was posted by an FB friend, I just played the game they way they understand it.
The thing is, Mr. Marker has a limited imagination. Box 4, with all the disasters, is not extreme enough. The real extreme is that with all these disasters, and desperate people starving and warring and fleeing and fighting for survival, some looney is going to toss a nuke…and then everyone tosses a nuke…and the world becomes a seething, lifeless husk.
But, this is also the extreme of box 2; the planet falls into a worldwide depression, people are starving and warring and fleeing and fighting for survival, and some looney tosses a nuke, etc.
If you substitute the true extremes into both boxes, the technique tells you exactly the opposite of what Mr. Marker claims. Since the bad extremes are equal, the only other difference is whether we spend a ton of money or not. In that case, the technique tells us not to spend the money.
Anyone who argues that we’re not as likely to encounter global destruction from box 2 as we are from box 4 can be reminded the this whole exercise is based on the concept that we can ignore the odds and compare only the extremes.
There was no response to this observation on FB; maybe that means it was effective.
Others have pointed this out in the original posting and here. This is nothing more than Pascal’s Wager. Want to really parody it? Just point out that applying the exact same “proof” can be used to show that God exists (or at least that you should believe in Him). So if Pascal’s Wager exists to “prove” religions to be true, then what does that make CAGW?
Marker guy makes a big assumption when he assumes ‘public action’ will be effective. By this I’m sure he means voting for the kind of politicians who talk about ‘climate action’. These types don’t have a very good track record. From pushing ethanol subsidies, to green cronies and bankruptcies. They even block things that do work like fracking and nuclear. Clinton (with the Goracle as VP) pulled the plug on fast breeder pilot plant.
The video is partly a presentation of page 186 of the publication, ” What’s the worst that could happen? “,(Perigree,July,2009). entitled ” Estimating Consequences: Filling in the Boxes of the Grid”.
The author tries to meet the objection identified by Ira ,at page 203, ” There aren’t enough Boxes! There aren’t enough Boxes! What does Action mean?”
He states,” There are of course intermediate cases of action between the two columns. And intermediate possibilities for rows. And we haven’t really detailed what Action means- are we talking a fascist state in a New World Order or are we talking just encouraging people to buy A/C to ride out the summer heat waves? This can get as complicated as you like, which is why there are thousands of highly trained professionals slugging it out in literally tens of thousands of peer reviewed articles……
If you think the 2×2 grid is too oversimplified to be at all useful and you want to increase its resolution by adding columns and rows , that’s fine. ( I produced a version with 45 boxes in one of my videos, and each box contained 25 cases ! Good times, good times……). But if you are like most of us , you won’t end up following through on that , and you’ll be left with nothing instead of an oversimplified something”.
[Thanks, Herbert, but the marker guy can add all the boxes he wants, but that will not correct his presentation. The contradiction between box #1 (Global depression)and box #3 (smiley face) will remain. If extreme spending to prevent GCC causes Global depression in box #1 it MUST do so in box #3. Also, his box #4 GLOBAL CATASTROPHY is based on FAILED CLIMATE MODELS and his box #2 is based on the phony idea that Human-caused GCC is the only kind. To fix his argument, he needs fewer boxes, not more! Ira!]
Ira, your name is spelled “Glickstein”, but you pronounce it “Glickstien”. Odd.
[Jeff, you are correct, in German pronunciation, the “ei” and “ie” pair is always pronounced as the second letter. But, though my name is derived from that language, I’m not of that nationality. Ira]