By Robert Bradley Jr. — September 30, 2021
“I realize lots of people don’t like government regulation, but the alternative is an out-of-control climate.” (A. Dessler: March 23, 2019)
Andrew Dessler, the climate alarmist’s alarmist and Michael Mann ally, is shifting from (highly uncertain) physical climate science to climate economics and policy analysis.
Dessler’s web page states:
My work has shifted towards the intersection of climate change and human society, with the goal of helping us better cope with the impacts of climate change. This includes work quantifying climate extremes and how climate change can alter them, as well as analyzing how climate change will stress crucial energy, water, and other infrastructure and human systems. This is a new area for me, so my ideas are still evolving.
Mark my words: this professor is eager to model the most extreme scenarios in his scare campaign. And don’t expect him to model the benefits of the human influence on climate (warmer nights, warmer winters, longer growing seasons, CO2 fertilization, etc.). It’s all costs, no benefits, from the human influence on climate–the deep ecology view that nature is optimal and we humans cannot think and plan for ourselves in the face of climate change. (People are just not buying the alarm, another story.)
Dessler fancies himself as an expert on energy choices (see here and here). He rejects the fundamental notion that energy density is game, set, and match for mineral energies relative to dilute, intermittent ones. (Just assume that cost does not matter, and he is half right.)
So, not surprisingly, Professor Dessler on Twitter announced he was going to teach the economics side of the climate-change debate and was looking for a free market economist to guest lecture on Zoom. He linked to a site that alleged that Milton Friedman “endorsed” a price on carbon dioxide (CO2).
I jumped on this in an email sent to Dessler (and John Nielsen-Gammon, his colleague at Texas A&M) on July 29, 2021.:
This interpretation [of Milton Friedman] is wrong.
Milton Friedman did not ever consider CO2 to be a pollutant. It is an emission, but not a pollutant causing demonstrable damage in a tort situation. https://www.masterresource.org/friedman-milton/milton-friedman-climate-realist/
Also, even when Friedman did not talk about CO2 or energy, his worldview worked against the whole climate agenda. I have a live post on this here:
It is interesting that you are branching out into free market economics and public policy. Keep an open mind! I think the more you study it, the more you will realize the limits to government planning and the importance of market forces and civil society. In fact, I think the continuing, open-ended boom in each of the fossil fuels makes adaptation, not mitigation, the easy choice for the climate dollar.
P.S. I cover Friedman’s energy views here (all of my MF posts are here. He endorsed my co-authored book Energy: The Master Resource with the back cover blurb: “This splendid book effectively debunks the widespread predictions of energy doom. Its factual base is comprehensive, its exposition clear and straightforward, and its economic reasoning sound.”
He and I also exchanged emails that I summarize here.
Final Comment
Professor Dessler did not respond to my email. I am part of his ‘cancel culture,’ no surprise there.
He knows he cannot win a debate with a reasoned critic of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation. Even E-mail exchanges with me leave him vulnerable.
“Angry Andy” stoops low to discredit his intellectual opponents, from physical climate science to climate economics to public policy (see here). I will continue to report, and let you decide.
———————–
My previous posts on Andrew Dessler can be found here.
Dessler’s 2010 positive cloud feedback paper purported to find the effect via a regression analysis with an r^2 of 0.02! Not very bright in his previous field of ‘expertise’. He will be completely lost and embarrassed outside it. That is a good thing, as he will be providing more targets for ridicule.
No he didn’t ….
Try reading the paper ….
https://landscapepartnership.net/maps-data/climate-context/cc-resources/ClimateSciPDFs/Science2010Dessler15237.pdf/app-download-file/file/Science2010Dessler15237.pdf
”Obviously, the correlation between DRcloud and DTs is weak (r2 = 2%), meaning that factors other than Ts are important in regulating DRcloud. An example is the Madden-Julian Oscillation (7), which has a strong impact on DRcloud but no effect on DTs. This does not mean that DTs exerts no control on DRcloud, but rather that the influence is hard to quantify because of the influence of other factors. As a result, it may require several more decades of data to significantly reduce the uncertainty in the inferred relationship.
Notice the word “obviously” ?
Then why is it not obvious to you that an expert would not say something as stupid as p = 0.02 is significant?
Staggering.
Download the paper. Download Steve McIntyre’s several critiques of it. Download my essay Cloudy Clouds from ebook Blowing Smoke, which cites verbatim the NASA commentary on the Dessler paper, plus his own comments to the NASA provided by the NASA commentary. Then get back. He knew the result was bogus, so provided verbal fudge factors everybody then ignored until your feeble excuse now to forgive this atrocity.
I am not a statistician.
I think R-squared is the percentage of the dependent variable variation that a linear model explains. The passage quoted seems to say in this case that this number is 2%.
I think this means that there is just about no correlation. 98% of the variability is not accounted for.
He then goes on to say
I think it does mean exactly that. Its not hard to quantify, its almost non-existent.
Anthony, you say: “Then why is it not obvious to you that an expert would not say something as stupid as p = 0.02 is significant?”
I find it difficult to understand you.
So you are saying “an expert would not say something as stupid as p=0.02 is significant”
I think many would. In biology the threshold for significance is often p<0.05, so this would be regarded by many experts as significant, depending on the context (p<0.01 is often used in other contexts).
However, R^2=2% is abnormal notation. It should be written: R^2=0.02. That would be classified by most experts as ‘no correlation’. The paper, to which you link, doesn’t mention the p number as far as I can see. This again is unusual, but there were 100 years of data.
I just wrote a script to replicate these numbers. I made 100 numbers in the x range normally randomly distributed, and likewise for y range. Then I worked out the correlation coeffient between the 2 groups of numbers, and squared it to get R^2. I did this 10,000 times.
On average 16% of the results were better correlated than 0.02. So this to me means that random numbers would produce this result at roughly the same frequency as one would throw a six with a normal die.
Therefore, as good as no correlation and well below the threshold for statistical significance. When something is below the level of statistical significance, it is meaningless to suggest there is some kind of correlation that would be teased out by more data, it is uncorrelated and so unknown.
The paper to which you refer is rubbish and should not have been published in any peer reviewed journal.
I likened his “graph” to the results of someone sneezing or even more appropriate: an inkblot.
Attempting a discussion of climate change is more futile than discussing politics with a communist. Communists are rather more likely to actually try to defend their views, rather than just dismissing any disagreement as coming from. “Denier”.
Yup. So skipping the stats, a perfect random shotgun blast should give an R^2 near zero. That is what he published in an illustration, claiming otherwise.
Yes, that is what I thought. He says
But this does exactly mean no control. Its not that there is influence which is hard to quantify, its that there is no discernible influence to quantify.
If you reason like this, statistics and scientific analysis become useless. Anything can have influenced anything, and if there is no correlation, well, we just have to look more to quantify this non existent influence as shown in this non existent correlation.
We build airstrips which are going to attract cargo carrying planes. None arrive. That doesn’t mean building them does not attract planes. Its just that the attraction is hard to quantify.
I am no statistician, but this looks like total denial of the most basic math and scientific method.
Well, the article did say he is an ally of Michael Mann.
In the case of Dessler, I bet it’s a twofer.
From this past Monday’s Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup:
“In punching away at the clear shortcomings of the narrative of climate alarm, we have, perhaps, missed the most serious shortcoming: namely, that the whole narrative is pretty absurd. Of course, many people (though by no means all) have great difficulty entertaining this possibility. They can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance.”
One of the definitions of the big lie:
The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” Wikipedia
Steve,
A concise and excellent post.
How could the Prime Minister of Great Britain believe the climate alarmist narrative which is so absurd?
Today I heard him say in interview that “Glasgow will mean the end of Climate Change”.
Perhaps I misheard him.
It is as preposterous as his apology for Britain being responsible for the Industrial Revolution.
Future generations will marvel at this Golden Age of Stupidity.
I recall a previous UK PM who went on about “Peace in our time.” So The Golden Age of Stupidity is an ongoing thing.
LOL. I’m sure Bojo will be every bit as successful at “ending climate change” as Chamberlain was at avoiding war with Hitler.
2020 showed that stopping all flights, emptying roads, closing down whole industries and staying indoors under voluntary house arrest had no discernible impact on atmospheric CO2 concentration. Check Mana Loa for the evidence.
out-of-control climate.” (A. Dessler: March 23, 2019)
Government regulation is a good thing if the evil it prevents is less than the evil it causes. An obvious example would be anti-slavery laws.
But as we know now, since 2020, that any meaningful lockdown must be far harsher than 2020 every year for ever and ever, like a boot stamping on your face…
We now know that meaningful mitigation is more evil than adapting to climate change.
Despite editing I cannot get the Quote function to work here.
I miss the old html <blockquote></blockquote> thing
Fyi it still works in Chrome on iPhone
It works differently from the old way.
You copy what you want to quote, then paste it as plain text. Then you add your comments, then you go back and select the text you want to quote, and hit the “quote” icon.
In other words, it works like bold, underline etc.
I don’t like it much, but it does work.
Or, click on the “source code” widget. (The two curly braces.)
Then you can use the HTML coding to your heart’s content.
Which I still almost always forget to do, and get highly frustrated.
(You also have to be able to type in HTML – all of the codes have to be manually inserted; paragraph breaks, soft breaks, etc. Which can foul your train of thought. Just had to edit this to close the parenthesis.)
I put my own quotation marks around the material I copy. It is clear enough.
My tablet won’t do the any of the extra stuff so I just use quote marks also.
That’s what quote marks are designed for.
“I put my own quotation marks around the material I copy. It is clear enough.”
And italicize it 🙂
Why?
“Government regulation is a good thing if the evil it prevents is less than the evil it causes”
Government in the developed world past that point by about the year 2000.
Slavery was legal because a government said it was. If they had not interfered Slavery would not have had the weight of law behind it.
Slavery was around long before any government got involved. Government was instituted for defense and to protect what rights existed and what property people owned. Slaves were property, little different than a horse, home, or weapon. Ownership and protection of property had the weight of law behind it.
Slavery was the legal norm in most societies for more than 10,000 years, possibly more than 100,000. While it is not a tradition to cherish, believing it is a recent perversion isn’t really helpful.
Slavery, was actually a great invention of early mankind. Instead of killing neighboring tribes, you turned them into slaves, and utilized their work to build larger projects for your society, tend large fields, build better houses, and so on.
However, eventually the invention of the steam engine resulted in machinery being less costly than the logistics involved with supporting a community of slaves. So the slaves were “freed”, put on pittance hourly wages which they were only paid when their labor was needed.
One could make a good argument that such an “advancement“ of civilization was all about the elites keeping their success train on the tracks in context of improved energy technology.
Probably much sooner than that; see the over-reach of the EPA, for example. Banning of DDT based on junk science, anyone? Montreal Protocol?
100 people working in one office probably use considerably less energy that when each of these has to heat up their own homes to work there. When this is repeated in community after community and city after city this becomes massive. Perhaps one of our expert readers can give us some of the numbers?
I question the premise that workers would not heat their own homes if they did not work there. I started working from home in 2002, and my heating/cooling strategy changed not at all; my electricity needs were raised slightly by running additional equipment at home, but my gasoline usage went down significantly. It was a net energy saver.
I keep my heat at a steady temperature, since that is what works best for the type of heating I have (radiant floors). So no “added” energy use there, traded a pittance of additional electricity use for far less driven miles/less fuel consumption.
If you live alone you might have the thermostat change the temperature while you are gone. If there is an adult and kids at home, there is no change whatsoever.
The hubris is great in this one. He imagines that he has the power to control the climate!
I’ve found that one of the best ways to get through to the CACA-indoctrinated is to emphasize that humans don’t have the power over nature that some imagine we do.
Our species did wipe out most of the Pleistocene megafauna, but we didn’t cause the last glaciation to end.
John, I know the ‘Pleistocene megafauna extinctions from human hunting’ is a popular and conventional idea. I have my doubts that it was just hunting, tho. The climate was changing rapidly. The NA megafauna was adapted to the last glacial maximum. Habitat change, shrinking ranges, possibly zoonotic diseases, could all have played a big role also. Saber toothed tigers (La Brea tar pits) were not hunted, they were hunters. They died out from lack of game. But humans did not. Despite obvious carnivore/omnivore differences, the story is likely much more complicated.
Subsidence Hunters hunt the ‘easy’ stuff, by definition. No different than wolves or lions. If previous easy stuff becomes scarce, hunters will hunt other stuff. White tail and mule deer, elk, bison, moose…. all easier and much more abundant than the last woolly mammoths in North America at the time of the NA megafauna extinctions.
Since, as far as anything I’ve ever read, there was no massive die-off of any animals after any of the previous 20 glacial cycles of the current ice age, it seems unlikely that the change at the end of the last glacial cycle had any significant effect.
He does seem to be suggesting that he thinks that government regulation is currently keeping the climate under control right now. Probably through Obama’s phone and pen.
“Andrew Dessler, the climate alarmist’s alarmist and Michael Mann ally”
Ably supported by climate lukewarmists at WUWT amongst other websites.
The evidence for whether anthropogenic CO2 has a major or minor effect on the climate, if either position were valid, comes from the same source. It is all a matter of degree.
If you believe in either then you are just being swallowed whole by the media or by IPCC reports or by weird ECS statements. You have to take a step back.
Choose from the options below:
a. Unicorns are causing enormous damage in the world’s forests.
b. Unicorns only cause some damage in the world’s forests, most of it is natural.
c. Unicorns don’t exist.
Me? I’m a c but you already knew that, eh, MarkW?
I also choose C!
I’m afraid I’ve been a c. for quite some time. I was taken in for a while by man-made global cooling, but that conjecture was missing data, on closer inspection. After it suddenly did the total 180, I caught on. When I write AGW … I don’t mean CAGW. I don’t see any evidence to support any part of “anthropogenic”. Thee “catastrophic” part is just stupidity.
I was taken in for a while by man-made global cooling, but that conjecture was missing data,
And they seem to be trying to change that, from some schemes I’ve read about.
Didn’t we already say that was going to happen the moment the warming spell switched back to cooling?
Apologies for my lack of clarity, Rory.
I was referring to some of the “geoengineering” schemes being floated to “counteract” all this terrible warming. Thus providing data for global cooling.
But I get your meaning too.
Don’t you find it odd that both versions are equally valid? The whole thing is being so manipulated, nothing can be trusted. They’re out of control.
I’m a “C” too – and don’t believe AGW or CO2 induced anything is valid other than as an academic exercise. The kernel of scientific truth regarding CO2’s supposed influence on temperature is purely hypothetical, and is grounded in the foundational assumption “all other things held equal” – a circumstance that has never, does not, and will never exist.
Here in the real world, “all other things” are most definitely NOT “held equal,” the “feedbacks” are most certainly negative, offsetting feedbacks, and the actual, as opposed to hypothetical, effect of atmospheric CO2 levels on temperature cannot be differentiated from ZERO. That is what observations support.
John, thanks for posting the cartoon. I don’t laugh much these days but that there is funny!
joe
That’s one of my favorites. 😀
How about if we round up all these folks who are convinced that they can control the weather and have them give a demonstration. COP 26 in Glasgow would be an excellent venue as it is likely to be cold and snowy. Let them cast out the cold and snow, If they succeed they will become heroes forever to their peers.
The northern Scotland site was chosen in part to prove ‘climate change’. Stuff like future children will not know snow. Could provide a great visual backdrop for more climate ridicule. I am hoping for a complete UK grid failure during COP26 owing to failed wind, failed EU interconnectors, and lack of sufficient natgas in storage to fire up the backup grid generation.
Sort of like Texas Feb 2021 on international media steroids.
Rud, I like the way you think. They really have set themselves up for some major mocking come November and the geniuses who organized this CF will be doing some fancy dancing if Glasgow turns into Texas Redux come November.
Didn’t the Copenhagen conference get snowed in so thoroughly that the likes of Al Gore were either delayed or forced to go elsewhere to get home? It became known as the “Gore Effect” because it happened at every conference Gore attended. We could use some of that in Glasgow … combined with rolling brown-outs.
While that would create human misery today, it would, hopefully, avoid greater future misery.
Snow at COP26 would be fun, but Glasgow isn’t northern, it is in the central lowland area and at sea level. Snow in November in Glasgow is not anyways the norm, AGW or no AGW. Perhaps if folks overseas think it is normal to see it, and they don’t see it, then maybe that makes a pro-alarmist point. Is that the idea referred?
I’d also like to see all the generators that they will probably have on hand to avoid such embarrassment, along with any trucks bringing food for the big Climate Fascist Bash, immobilized miles away for lack of fuel. 😀
“Let them cast out the cold and snow, If they succeed they will become heroes forever to their peers.”
“Glendower:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them? “
“… He rejects the fundamental notion that energy density is game, set, and match for mineral energies relative to dilute, intermittent ones …”.
# Europe asking Russia for more coal to survive winter energy crunch (Bloomberg, 30 September 2021).
# Britain’s energy sector in meltdown as leading energy supplier faces collapse (The Guardian, 30 September 2021).
# Renewable energy output drops almost a third (Financial Times, 29 September 2021).
# China braces for a chilly winter as its home-grown energy crisis intensifies (The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 2021).
# Kate Andrews: Britain’s weak energy security puts net zero in doubt (The Daily Telegraph, 29 April 2021).
# Allysia Finley: Climate policy meets cold reality in Europe (The Wall Street Journal, 28 September 2021).
# Streets go dark and lifts grind to a halt as China cuts power to meet climate targets (The Daily Telegraph, 28 September 2021).
# China desperate for more coal as energy crisis cripples large section of industry (Reuters, 28 September 2021).
# Surge in UK wholesale gas prices fuels winter energy crisis fears (The Guardian, 28 September 2021).
# Monica Showalter: Green energy leaves Europe in the cold — the freezing cold (American Thinker, 28 September 2021).
(Via The Global Warming Policy Forum).
I would love to follow him around for a week and keep him from using or benefiting from fossil fuels. What a hypocrite he is!
I’ve got a false moustache, nose and glasses and a funny looking deerstalker you could use.
Must be higher pay in economics.
No
There is even less science in economics, it’s really all feeling and belief
That is my guess why he’s switching
I thought the alarmists were sure that you had to be an expert with a PhD in a field in order to do research or everything you say would be wrong. Does this apply to him?
You cannot control the climate by using science based remedies.
You can only control the climate by using legislation.
You ban extreme weather events and mysteriously they go away.
It worked with unicorns.
The solution is only possible when “certain” nations begin to take “climate change” seriously and set “meaningful CC goals” set aside large ‘donations’ to the UN and address their populace with stern warnings of dire future outcomes … unless (insert list of penances suitable for climate crimes). The planet will then favour us with a return to an unchanging climate. It also helps if you show appropriate remorse when using anything powered by oil or gas.
Does anyone know if NOAA ever printed a retraction or correction of their July 2021 “Hottest July Ever” report? I know they altered their August 0.93 to a 0.92 value in September, but I can’t find any news from the “media” about the change.
“I realize lots of people don’t like government regulation, but the alternative is an out-of-control climate.” (A. Dessler: March 23, 2019)
Think about this statement for a second. He’s saying that humans can control the climate through government regulations. Absolute hubris. The implication is that the climate was in control until we started burning fossil fuels. The idea promoted by these clowns that climate can be brought under human control shows an unbelievable level of magical thinking and conceit. Even if it were somehow possible to control climate who would trust politicians, academics or business tycoons to do the controlling? Or would the UN have an on-line voting site where we could all vote on tomorrows temperature and amount of precipitation? I don’t think we will ever be able to control the climate – God help us if we do.
Their goal is to make even “proximity” (in the form of a debate) with a “contrarian” the same as being “complicit”. They want a hard border with people who do science!
“Borders don’t work” they say but they want a frontier like “le front républicain” in France against the “extreme” “far right” (which is pretty much the equivalent of the French communist party of the 80ties).
An embarrassment to my alma mater.
Fat face, narrow beady eyes. He and Mann have a lot in common.
Criticize only his ideas , not his looks. ad hominem attacks are inappropriate and make you look foolish.
His looks are a part of his personality, which is what makes him the jacka$$ he is. It’s pretty easy to tell a liberal by their lack of muscle tone and dumb expression.
Looks like someone painted a face on a part of the male anatomy.
Has Dresser ever been asked why the temperature recovery from the Little Ice Age should have stopped ~1950?
What ever was the basis for declaring that the (climatically speaking) steady 200-400 year WARMING TREND (evidenced by 150 years of perfectly linear Tidal Guage data – the oceans are climate thermometers) had at least one unknown cause until 1940 but then that (or those) cause(s) suddenly stopped… and CO2 emissions kicked in as the sole cause of the continued warming?
That claim is childishly stupid… requiring a ton of VERY unlikely assumptions.
Once you see that word “intersection” you know you are about to be hit with a load of leftist double talk.
IMO what he is really saying is that as a “climate scientist” he is a failure and he is changing his focus to a field where his ability to indoctrinate and self promote may be more effective.
Looks like hubris has joined stupidity and arrogance as having no limits. Dessler just moved hubris into the approaching infinity column.