By David Wojick |August 10th, 2020|
As a logician, I am always on the lookout for fallacies and there is no lack of them in climate change alarmist policies. New Zealand’s newly released climate risk assessment not only has multiple fallacies, they build on one another in a cascade.
This is not about New Zealand. The authors of the assessment make clear that theirs is a new approach which they hope will be used globally. So this is about the world, including America.
The massive report is titled “First national climate change risk assessment for New Zealand.” Under New Zealand’s climate law, these assessments are supposed to be done every five years and this is the first.
The scope is breathtaking. The idea is to identify all of the significant risks due to human caused climate change that will be present in 2050 and 2100. Moreover, these supposed risks are prioritized.
Unfortunately this elaborate procedure is just a cascade of fallacies. Some of the major ones are listed below.
First, they use computer models to say precisely what the average weather will be in 2050 and 2100. This includes short and long term temperatures, precipitation patterns, and other climate features.
The fallacy is that there is no computer model today that can accurately make such forecasts. Different major models disagree strongly in predicting all of these features. For example the model sensitivity to doubling CO2 ranges from 1 to 6 degrees C, which is a huge range.
Second, they use the average of what is called the CMIP5 climate model runs. These are runs on a large number of climate models that are made to feed into the IPCC process. (Here there are several problems. In particular the models are all constrained so that all the significant forces are human, but that is a different issue.)
The fallacy is that there is no reason to believe that the average of a bunch of bad models is good. In fact the CMIP5 average has been shown to run very hot compared to observed warming. (CMIP6 is even worse.)
Third, they then choose to use the modeling of a wildly worst case emissions scenario called “RCP 8.5”. This scenario for future emissions is so high that it has been criticized as impossible. Using RCP 8.5 is certainly a fallacy.
Fourth, they do what is called “down scaling” of these questionable modeling results. Down scaling means taking the crude modeling results for a large area and somehow generating results for specific places. There is no scientific way to derive fine scale forecasts from the model’s large scale ones. The data simply is not there. However it is done is arbitrary.
New Zealand is geographically pretty small with a land area of just over 100,000 square miles, roughly the size of Colorado. The risk assessment divides New Zealand into 8 tiny zones, with a unique climate forecast for each. This is a glaring fallacy.
Fifth, these impossible fine scale forecasts were then discussed by a large number of people, in a variety of ways, to define all the significant risks. This is an exercise in imagination, not science. It is well known in decision theory that the results of group gropes like this depend heavily on who is there, what they are given and how they are guided.
The fallacy here is to pretend that this is a systematic inventory of risks, suitable for policy making.
Sixth, the supposed risks were ranked based on polling the participants. In addition to the group grope problem there is the pesky fact that risk is a two dimensional concept so risks cannot simply be ranked in one dimension. Each risk has both a severity and a probability.
Generally speaking, high severity but low probability risks are not worth addressing. Meteor strikes are a standard example (the impact really is an impact). The same is true for high probability but low severity risks. What one looks for are risks that combine relatively high severity and probability.
This 2-value ranking was not done, giving the fallacy of the single ranking of risks.
The seventh fallacy is yet to come. This wrongly ranked list of imagined risks based on arbitrary down scaling of an average of questionable computer model results running an impossible scenario is supposed to lead to a National Adaptation Plan in two years. That would be a mega-fallacy.
On the amusing side, I think they got the highest ranked risk right. This is the risk that the government will do the wrong thing. I agree completely, especially if they use this risk assessment.
Also very funny is the “Give us a lot more money” risk. It goes like this:
“Risk of delayed adaptation and maladaptation due to knowledge gaps resulting from under-investment in climate change adaptation research and capacity building.
Risk summary:
Under-investment in research and capacity building to inform understanding of climate change risks and impacts is undermining New Zealand’s ability to develop evidence-based adaptation policy. Critical research gaps relate to:
–atmospheric processes
–hydrological cycle impacts
–ecosystem responses
–biodiversity and biosecurity
–New Zealand’s rural and urban communities
–the economic costs of climate change
–impacts on the primary sector
–impacts on heritage
–effects on health and health services
–use of mātauranga Māori to inform adaptation
–cascading impacts
–how to govern climate change adaptation at a number of scales.
These research gaps are a critical barrier to informed decision-making. While these gaps remain, maladaptive actions are a key risk.” (Page 188)
Given all these significant gaps one would think that an accurate assessment would conclude that no risk assessment is possible at this time. That is my assessment.
Conclusion:
The New Zealand climate risk assessment is a cascade of fallacies, unfit for policy making.
Author
David Wojick Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see
http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html
For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see
http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/
Available for confidential research and consulting.
From the article: “The New Zealand climate risk assessment is a cascade of fallacies, unfit for policy making.”
The entire field of Human-caused Climate Change is a cascade of fallacies.
These risk assessments are now bound into legislation and are going to form the basis of all planning and consenting activity. The costs are horrendous. New Zealand is inflicting massive impositions on its economy to save 0.004 of one degree while the world’s biggest emitters laugh and carry on.
This report on climate change risks is a load of hogwash or worse .
I have not read the whole paper but here are some of the points which makes absolutely no sense at all .
It starts with listing New Zealands emissions 35% from agriculture mostly methane from livestock .
Enteric methane emissions do not add one atom or molecule containing CARBON to the atmosphere over any time span .
All fodder consumed by livestock has absorbed CO2 from the air and the small amount of methane released during digestion breaks down rapidly in the upper atmosphere into CO2 and water vapour.
The process is a cycle and no GHG is added to the atmosphere.
The report then calls timber that has grown absorbing CO2 all the time emissions once the trees are harvested .
Not one molecule of CO2 is added to the atmosphere over the life time of the trees and the subsequent burning or decay of the timber, paper or the forest debris.
The theory of global warming states quite specifically that the burning of fossil fuels is releasing carbon dioxide and methane that has been locked up for millions of years .
How much warming that we will experience from CO2 increasing from 300 ppm to 600 ppm has not been proven .
We now have virtually every activity that man kind undertakes classified as emissions .
This is blatantly wrong and it shows that the global warming threat is not about controlling future warming but it is about controlling the worlds population ,you and me while the elite carry on as usual.
This government is committed to planting a billion trees to absorb CO2 and good pastoral farmland is being planted in perpetuity and the investors will be paid in carbon credits instead of growing food to feed the world .
Eventually these forests die or are burnt and if that happens will the investors pay the carbon credits back?
Whole districts will be come derelict as the populations decline once the trees are planted work becomes scarce and people are forced to move to find employment .
Growing trees are an offset as eventually all the absorbed CO2 is released back to the atmosphere BUT this cannot be counted as emissions .
This report is not based based on facts and has been cobbled together to fix the supposed threat of climate change when there are many more urgent problems facing New Zealand at this time .
Sea level rise is 1.5 mm per year with no sign of acceleration and by the year 2100 the sea will have risen by 1.5 x 80 = 12 cm in metrics or less than 5 inches over the next 80 years.
No need to get you knickers in a twist LLoydo and Griff .
Respect!
Our current politicians have no understanding of science and the party in power derives most of it’s ideas from Karl Marx. Our current PM is very obviously in thrall to the UN and sees a position of authority with the UK as her ultimate destination, stepping up from being merely an acolyte.