Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen – 9 February 2024 — 2000 words/13minutes
Two of my favorite substackers, William “Matt” Briggs and Roger Pielke Jr., have articles up that touch on the subject of what is disparagingly known as “The Science”.
The initial caps version – The Science – invariably means the opinions about some scientific subject held by those telling you to Follow The Science. It very often means a strong consensus position being promoted or enforced by a group advocating some particular belief about a scientific topic or policy position prescribed by those holding that belief. And there are too many of these today to list – one The Science for almost each and every topic you might choose to mention.
Now, there is nothing wrong with any group, even a professional association, like the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association (ALA) or the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), having a group consensus position on a topic that falls under their purview. The AAP even has whole section of their website dedicated to advocacy, which includes such things as advocating to keeping guns out of the reach and hands of kids and making sure kids get their childhood illnesses vaccinations.
The problem comes when we see things like this, as related by Pielke Jr.:
“In September, 2022 California Governor Gavin Newsome signed into law a bill that prohibited medical professionals from sharing “misinformation” with patients. Specifically, the law stated that it would be:
[U]nprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.
The law defined “misinformation”:
“Misinformation” means false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”
And there you have it….California passed a law that threatens the professional license of any medical professional who shares their professional opinion or any information that contradicts a “contemporary scientific consensus”. It is considered “false” because it contradicts the current consensus. And in this case about a topic that has a lot of controversy and a broad range of opinion.
The “contemporary scientific consensus” thus becomes legally enforceable under State law.
Let’s parse that:
Contemporary: If a thing, an idea, an opinion, or a consensus is contemporary is just means it “exists now”. The fact that it could or does “exist now” means that it could have been different in the past and might be different in the future.
Scientific: Simply means “Scientific is used to describe things that relate to science or to a particular science”. When “scientific” is used as an adjective in today’s language, it is often used as code word for “true or truth”.
Consensus: Even the meaning of the word “consensus” is a bit controversial. Its core meaning is that of “a generally accepted opinion; wide agreement”. Some dictionaries use “unanimity” as a synonym but unanimity means “agreement by all people involved”, which is close but gets no prize. There will be varying opinions, but for this essay today, I will differentiate between consensus – something which is generally accepted or has wide agreement – as different from unanimity which carries the concept that everyone agrees. This is a bit tricky because a consensus reached by a democratic group would be a statement with which all, or almost all, can agree.
Pielke Jr. argues like this: “The notion of consensus-as-truth has been operationalized in various forms: journalistic “fact checkers,” academic “misinformation” researchers, and content moderation on social media platforms. The practical effect is the creation of self-appointed arbiters of truth — journalists, academics, social media platforms, and even governments — who render judgments on acceptable and unacceptable speech according to conformance with an acceptable view.”
And goes on to say:
“The notion of consensus-as-truth can create obstacles to improving understandings. In re-reading Oreskes 2004 on climate consensus for the first time in a while I was struck by this comment:
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. [Oreskes 2004]
This is completely backwards — scientific assessments are an interpretive snapshot of what a scientific literature says about specific scientific claims. When done properly, they are a useful characterization of what is often a large amount of published research. But make no mistake — the scientific literature does not “agree” with assessments, the literature informs the assessments.” [ emphasis mine – kh ]
The assessments Pielke Jr. refers to are the “consensus statements” arrived at by the IPCC committees in the science chapters, by far more often, the consensus statements agreed upon by the politicians writing the Summaries for Policy Makers, which then get represented in the media as talking points as the “contemporary scientific consensus” on climate change – by which the media and politicians really mean “the truth about climate change”.
Peilke Jr. uses this illustration from Clark et al. 2023 to make a point about the “consequence[s] of scientific censorship” noting that “Assume that each piece of evidence is equally weighty. Censorship that obstructs evidence against X will produce a peer-reviewed literature that concludes that X is true when most likely it is not.“ There are 11 papers which conclude “X is not true” and only 6 which conclude “X is true”, but 5 “X is true” were published, and only 1 “X is not true” got past the academic censorship and made it into press.
Have we seen this recently? Of course, in the Covid Origin Wars and consistently for many years in the Climate Wars.
When Clark or Pielke Jr. use the word “censorship” they don’t just mean that a specific person or viewpoint is forbidden to be spoken or printed. Academic Censorship is when academic journals consciously, out of fear of pushback or out of blatant bias either refuse publish, refuse to consider or refuse even to send for review papers that on their face are contradictory to consensus positions. In the image with stars we see only one dissenting paper made it into press.
We saw this regarding a paper from Alimonti et al. just last year in which a team of Climate Crisis scientists raised havoc in the mass media (really, Climate Crisis News Cabal outlets) and bullied the editors of a high ranking scientific publisher to retract an already peer-reviewed, approved, and published paper. [ here, here, here ]. The authors tell the story from their viewpoint here: .pdf.
And what about the censorship-by-bias in the Main Stream Media? You only see or hear news when some news outlet makes the decision to have a journalist cover a story and then decides to publish it. Even if actually published, a story may be “buried on page 29”. In our electronic world, only front-page stories or pages elected for broad exposure as “click bait” or “push news” arrive at the majority of readers/viewers. Which stories those are results from decisions of editors who are constrained by their Editorial Boards and Editorial Narratives.
William “Matt” Briggs takes a slightly different approach – he is, after all, a statistician. He talks about the probability of some proposition, written in statistician-ese as Pr(Y). Pr mean ‘the probability of” and of Y, being the proposition, such as Covid originated in a Lab in China, based on the Evidence provided to be considered E, which in the end becomes Pr(Y|E) – read as “the probability of Y given evidence E”.
That, he says, “is, or should be, all of science.“
Every science finding, every point of scientific “truth” is based on a Pr(Y|E), the probability of the proposition “Y” [ say, rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere cause dangerous global warming ] being true —- wait for it, here is the pivot point —- given this particular set of evidence “E”.
If one changes the set of evidence, adds something or subtracts something, as we do everyday in the journals of science, then the Pr(Y|E) changes because the “E” has changed – and you can not and do not ever ever ever (like really, never) have simply a probability of Y – it must be, is always always always Pr(Y|E). The probability, you can just consider this as meaning “the probability that this statement / view / proposition / etc. is true, depends entirely on the whole set of evidence as presented — change the evidence = change the probability of truth.
“Scientists should announce their Y and E, and then state Pr(Y|E)—and then stop. Since the E picked by scientists (with some exceptions for mathematicians and the like) won’t be necessarily true, and only contingent, all need to consider what different evidence would do to Y.
In any case, it is always scientism to say “Pr(Y|E) means we should all do the following”, and this is so even if there are no problems whatsoever with Pr(Y|E). From this it follows that nearly all research that involves statistics is deeply saturated in scientism.“
And when someone says “we should all do the following” – that we should Follow The Science — then we have left the field of Science and entering into the hazy domain of Scientism.
And even if we all believed with all our hearts on that Pr(Y|E) – the probability that proposition Y given evidence E being true is nearly 100% – that doesn’t mean that we would all make the same decisions about what to do about it. We wouldn’t necessarily follow, nor should we.
Why? It’s the Evidence, stupid!
Science didn’t stop being done last year, or even yesterday – so the cumulative evidence supporting last year’s “contemporary scientific consensus” has changed already and will change more in the future.
Going back to Pielke Jr., he wraps up with these two statements:
“The notion that scientists should agree with a consensus is contrary to how science advances — scientists challenge each other, ask difficult questions and explore paths untaken. Expectations of conformance to a consensus undercuts scientific inquiry. It also lends itself to the weaponization of consensus to delegitimize or deplatform inconvenient views, particularly in highly politicized settings.”
Followed by:
“A recent study of scientific censorship by scientists by Clark et al. 2023 finds that pressures by scientists on their peers to conform to a consensus are fairly common within the scientific community:
Confirmation bias and other forms of motivated cognition can fuel a self-reinforcing dynamic in which censorship and self-censorship discourage empirical challenges to prevailing conclusions, encouraging a false consensus that further discourages dissent.“
Bottom Lines:
1. “There is no such thing, therefore, [as] Following The Science.” – William Briggs
2. Science changes moment to moment – as new evidence is produced and found for and against various hypotheses.
3. Generally accepted understandings of scientific topics – commonly referred to as “consensuses” – are themselves momentary and must be allowed to change as evidence changes.
4. Enforcing a consensus view, in any manner, is anti-science and calls to “Follow the Science” are always made to enforce some consensus and thus also anti-science.
And, a final word: The California law, mentioned at the beginning of the essay, has been repealed, after being shot down by the courts.
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Author’s Comment:
Read the two substack pieces from Pielke Jr. and Briggs (here and here). Worth the effort.
My ongoing series on Monarch Butterflies is an example of the changing of a consensus by new evidence – albeit by just a little. Once Chip Taylor weighed in, the pre-existing consensus began to crack. In a couple more years, the consensus will have shifted considerably.
Even the Skeptical Climate View shifts and changes as time goes on and more and broader evidence is presented for and against the prevailing consensus view.
Enforced consensus is tyranny and is destructive of the scientific enterprise.
Learn to spot when consensus enforcing is taking place – and don’t fall for it. Brute force methods, think Michael Mann et al, are obvious – biased journal editing is much more subtle.
Thanks for reading.
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Michael Crichton explained this very well, “Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
From: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/michael-crichton-explains-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-consensus-science/
Joe Biden claims that he was the one who first delivered that speech.
It was when he giving a Nobel Prize to Michael Mann.
If WUWT had Slashdot’s option for upvoting for funny, I would definitely have given you such an upvote. Unfortunately the new crop of /.’ers seem to have brought in institutions of advocation instead of institutions of education.
And that was right before he sat down with Hitler and Mussulini to negotiate the end of the Korean War. 😆😅🤣😂
Yeah, the point was that Consensus errors are too many to be replying on them, it is REPRODUCIBLE research that is far more valuable that can drive science research upward into new understanding.
It took a while before the first vaccine (Jenner, smallpox) was accepted.
He just made some observations that milkmaids rarely got smallpox. (Hence the phrase that was still in use when I was a kid that a girl’s complexion was “smooth as a milkmaids”.)
But cows got cowpox. Milkmaids milked cows. He had no clue what a virus was but, his hypotheses was that exposure to cowpox somehow prevented smallpox.
He experimented and was shown to be be right.
No one knew why.
CliSy models have shown themselves to be magnitudes in error.
Hardly justification to turn the World upside down.
Michael Crichton is exactly right.
I wonder what he would think about seeing this abomination of science?:
From the article: ““A recent study of scientific censorship by scientists”
I bet Michael wouldn’t have much good to say about one scientist censoring another scientist.
If Michael were alive today, he would be in a state of agitation about scientific censorship. Along with the rest of us.
There’s an old saying I have long subscribed to:- “Just because they’re in the majority doesn’t mean they’re right”.
California has codified the well known logical fallacy “argumentum ab auctoritate” (argument from authority). That is all the claim of consensus represents. It most certainly does not establish some scientific truth which in itself is an unscientific concept. Are there no longer any practicing logicians in our venerated institutions of learning? If there are they need to speak up.
Some pertinent quotes:
Einstein: Replying to “100 Authors against Einstein” a book written 26 years after Einstein first revealed his Special Theory of Relativity, said – “Why 100? If I am wrong, one would do.” Not today Dr. Einstein, not today.
Feynman: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Sorry Dr. Feynman, today you go directly to jail. You do not pass GO. You do not collect $200.
If the “misinformation” law were still in effect, then an objective application of said law would ban CDC communication releases.
Except that there is another definition of “consensus”. That being whatever position the government is pushing.
Feynman also said “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt”. I saw that quote here a few months ago. Forgot who offered it here. One of my all time favorite quotes. Says a lot.
Possibly me, that’s one of my all time favourite quotes as well.
Richard Feynman also came up with “I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers which cannot be questioned”, which is as relevant as ever following the declaration by Michael Mann’s attorney after the Mann v. Steyn & Simberg (jury) decision.
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PS : “Oftentimes when people say ‘follow the science’, they’re really saying ‘follow our plan’.” — Jon Miltimore
I once took out a library book showing how Feynman did analysis of complex physics stuff- using what looked like simple geometry. Apparently, this method is well respected by most physicists. I didn’t study it but I was impressed. I realized if I ever really wanted to learn more about those theories – that would be the way to do it.
A consensus v can be right or wrong
To be right, the consensus must be based on strong evidence, and needs a lot of time to be challenged.
The near 100% consensus that a greenhouse effect exists and CO2 is part of it is such a consensus. It began in 1896 and has had a long time for scientists to refute it. They have failed.
That is a meaningful consensus, except to the AGW deniers here.
The actual temperature effect of CO2 in the atmosphere, and whether more CO2 is good news or bad news, is not part of that consensus.
There is also a 59% consensus on CAGW, as determined by a 2022 poll of scientists conducted by libertarians
Predictions of CAGW are best known as the climate change boogeyman.
That CAGW consensus, often falsely claimed to be 97%, is a meaningless consensus for several reasons
(1) Predictions of CAGW began in the late 1950s and were quantified in 1979. But no CAGW has ever existed.
(2) Lab spectroscopy of CO2 and water vapor, and climate change observations, do not support the claim of a huge water vapor positive feedback. CO2 growth rates are also exaggerated.
The result:
The CAGW consensus is not based on data, so has no connection with science. Science requires data. Data free predictions of CAGW are climate astrology.
The history of science shows that a scientific consensus is often later found to be anywhere from slightly wrong to completely wrong.
I would not be surprised if much of Einstein’s work is, centuries later, found to be wrong.
Tens of thousands of military pilots, since the 1940s, have witnessed unidentified objects in the sky, making maneuvers impossible for vehicles built on this planet. It seems obvious we are not the only life in the universe, and that other civilizations could be 1,000, 10,000 or even one million years ahead of us. They would probably laugh at our current understanding of science and demonization of CO2.
(please spare the UFOs are only swamp gas comments, which just make the commenters appear to be stupid)
You know, even if pretending not to know, that there are papers from scientist ( real) in high quantity contradicting basing on science and scientific research the CO2 theory, so to talk about consensus is a lie, and you know that
Hairy Krishna
In over 26 years of reading mainly skeptic papers and articles I have never found one believable article that contradicted the existence of a greenhouse effect … which is measured 365 daya a year.
While the greenhouse effect is mainly from water vapor and clouds, even places with low water vapor and no clouds still have measurable back radiation, which is the greenhouse effect.
That makes you a science denier.
In more than 27 years of reading mainly articles from sources that I categorize in a way that suggests that I am ready to honestly consider concepts my faith indicates that I cannot consider, I have never questioned my faith.
That makes you a denier of my faith. Witch! Witch!
I’m confident that a large portion of the readership recognizes that radiative gases do result in warming. What is being argued is how much warming is caused by human caused increase in the radiative gases and whether that warming is cause for concern. Furthermore, clouds are much more effective for nighttime warming than any greenhouse gas because they completely block the atmospheric IR window (why cloudless deserts can get cold at night). OTOH, clouds likely result in daytime cooling.
I have never found a believable statement by dickie-bot that shows any scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2.
Consensus is not science… blathering is not science…
But it is all he has.
You know what “global radiation” is ?
As usual you write BS, as in that comment you reduce greenhouse effect only on clouds and water vapour, as you usually try to convince people CO2 is the control knob of some little increas of temperatures and call them denier if they disagree with you.
I know no-one denying a greenhouse effect, there you can write years over years the same BS — äh, that’s what you are doing 😀
In so far your answer to my comment has nothing to do with my comment, learn comprehensive reading.
Richard ==> “I would not be surprised if much of Einstein’s work is, centuries later, found to be wrong.” Totally agree. I have my own doubts….
Well, yeah…we’ve all witnessed hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of video evidence of humans zipping around the galaxy!
Frank ==> Go Enterprise!
Einstein’s work may be incomplete but I doubt that it is wrong. We have billions of experiments in particle accelerators showing it is correct as far as it goes.
Newton’s work was not wrong. Einstein’s work supplemented Newtonian Physics for the special cases of high velocities. Newton’s work is still applicable to things humans do every day going about their-turtle like lives. Applying relativity to everyday, simple, low-velocity, physics problems is like bringing in an excavator to plant a flower.
“Newton’s work was not wrong.”
Newton’s estimate of the precession of Mercury’s orbit is incorrect. GR’s prediction is basically on the button. Newton believed in absolute space and time. Neither are correct according to relativity. He believed in the corpuscular (particle) theory of light which is the current belief. Newton was able to demonstrate that the first and second Kepler’s Laws are correct and that the third is approximately correct.
The precession of Mercury’s orbit is a small perturbation of what Newtonian mechanics predicts, so Clyde is largely correct with respect to planetary orbits. (Correspondence principle)
OTOH, one thing in modern life does require paying attention to General Relativity and that’s GPS and similar satellite navigation.
“. . . small perturbation . . . .”
So that’s the criterion now? Newton requires gravity to travel at infinite speed. GR limits it to C. Newton doesn’t predict gravity waves. GR does. It’s difficult to resolve these differences. Energy is being lost from binary pulsar systems. Where is it going and how does it happen? Newtonian physics is clueless.
So tell me, why isn’t NASA using Einstein’s equations when they calculate orbits?
Who says they don’t? They use SR and GR corrections for the GPS system. The orbiting clocks run slower due to orbital speed, and they run faster due to being higher up in the Earth’s gravity well. The GR correction is larger than the SR correction.
Of course, they probably prefer the much simpler math with Newton. However, you need something like the Newton method to solve Kepler’s equation.
It seems to me that you are ignoring that I said, “Einstein’s work supplemented Newtonian Physics for the special cases of high velocities.” While not approaching what is usually considered “relativistic velocities,” orbital velocities of about 18,000 MPH are not exactly the situation the we commonly experience on the surface of the Earth. Depending on how many significant figures one’s application requires, I stand my by statement that Newton’s equations are sufficient for most mundane applications. They are good enough for cars and container ships, despite being only approximations for relativistic events.
At this point in time, we can’t be sure that Einstein’s equations are “correct” for every application either. Using the correct tool for a job is the sign of a thinking person.
I seems that you don’t know what the principle of relativity is. That principle dates back to Galileo. He reasoned that if you’re on a ship that is moving on calm water, then you won’t feel motion. He believed, as many do, that our physical laws and theories are invariant with respect to location and speed. SR makes Maxwell’s equations invariant with respect to inertial frames of reference. GR includes SR, adds accelerating frames of reference, and includes the equivalence principle.
Right. If anything RM will be a limiting case.
How can one trust a man who could not balance a checkbook or comb his hair?
He married his cousin.
His daughter mysteriously disappeared and he never said a word
He wore crazy fuzzy slippers with pants.
If not for E=mc2, people would have thought Einstein was a lunatic
“If not for E=mc2, people would have thought Einstein was a lunatic”
False once again. He actually got his Noble Prize for other work- ““his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.””
“How can one trust a man who could not balance a checkbook or comb his hair?”
He certainly could have done those things if he cared to. He always had people around him to take of such trivial matters as his checkbook while he pondered deep mysteries. As for his hair, his wild hair was mostly after he became famous- and he sort of liked the bohemian image he was cultivating. And of course, someone like him could care less about hair styles or clothing fashions. That’s been attitude my too since I was in college in the ’60s.
“He married his cousin.”
Yes he did- and it was legitimate back then. It was no secret. Not acceptable by today’s standards- but that was a long time ago.
“His daughter mysteriously disappeared and he never said a word”
She didn’t disappear. He and his first wife put the baby into adoption. They were not married- so the culture of the time would have considered the baby as a “bastard”- and it would have ruined his career. Of course that was a selfish idea- which most of us would not approve of. Supposedly, the baby disappeared in the sense that nobody has determined where she went and it’s believed she never knew who her father was. He later raised 2 sons from his first wife- and his adapted children from his 2nd wife.
“He wore crazy fuzzy slippers with pants.”
Yuh, so what. I had purple striped bell bottoms back in ’67. Wanna make something of that? 🙂
It’s well understood his personal life was problematic. He was so focused on his work- most human interactions were to him just an annoyance. He was certainly a lefty- but never joined any of the radical groups- especially any associated with the USSR- which he disliked for its totalitarianism. One reason for his hatred of authority is that he hated the Prussian mentality of Germany when he was young in that country. And of course it was right wingers who were anti Semitic. He was initially against the creation of Israel but l later supported it. He was offered the job as president of that nation- but just didn’t want to be involved with politics other than in limited ways.
Mr. Zorzin: Yeah, looks like Mr. Greene read a bazooka-Joe’s bio of Einstein, now he’s an expert on a subject on which we must be educated, because nobody here knows anything like he knows it. Again. Rinse and repeat with him, tiresome.
I recall that Oppenheimer had some personal behavioral quirks too.
He also had a fantasy about some kind of a big firecracker made from sifted dirt that could blow up whole cities. What a kook!
He and Einstein used to be drinking buddies at Rick’s Cafe Americain.
Joe Biden remembers that he used to drink with Einstein there as well.
And when Oppy first came in for lunch, Joe said –
“Of all the gin joints in all the world, he has to come in to dine”.
Seems to be lunatic may help to be a good scientist with a good intuition, so you, Richard still have a long way to go, but certainely for you it’s a cul de sac, regarding your comments.
Mr. Greene: For all his faults, he seemed to be right alot about important things and his work has held up longer than your pet theory (debunked, even if you didn’t read it). You seem to want to compare yourself favorably to Einstein, why don’t you just say that you are no Einstein, but he was no Greene?
And amazingly, Einstein did his best work in his early/mid 20s- mostly 2 theories of relativity. He didn’t like quantum mechanics- never accepted it. It was because of him that America developed the atom bomb. He sent a letter to FDR, then met with him letting him know the potential of the bomb and how Germany was getting close to it. It turns out they were not so close- but at that time “the consensus” was that Germany had the best physicists of any country. So much for consensus. 🙂
Maybe they were the best physicists but they were short of resources – luckily for us!
Richard, you don’t know the difference between legitimate trust and blind faith.
Perhaps not wrong, but rather incomplete. Much like Newton’s laws are not wrong, they are incomplete since they only deal with large masses moving at non-relativistic speeds.
Mr. Hansen: Did you notice that Mr. Greene says this about Einstein, but Mr. Greene would bust a blood vessel if you say his CO2 “consensus” might be proved wrong someday.
So far Kip, every test of GR has failed to find a flaw in the theory. I believe Gravity Probe B was another success for GR.
Key words are “So far”. One of the unsolved problems in Physics is reconciling Quantum Mechanics with Relativity. This may require tweaks to Relativity.
Erik ==> with you there — the size and direction of the tweaks may surprise many.
So there’s no such thing as QED (or QCD)? QED replaces Maxwell’s Equations because it’s more correct.
The question, “professor” Greene, is just how much of the tiny warming is due to CO2. I doubt there are many people where who think the answer is zero- so your continued insults are extremely ignorant and proves what arrogant a*****e you are. If you read more of this site- you’ll see that the real doubt is just how much “forcing” is done by CO2. Most think it’s minimal. It’s not about refuting it entirely- but nailing down the ECS- which, given it’s huge range of possibilities- is proving to be crappy science- and the alarmists have had until 1896 to refine it to several decimal places.
There are several AGW deniers here. My statement to that effect in my prior comment was accurate and written as a fact, not an insult. In fact, there were NO insults in that comment, except in your imagination.
You may not be one of AGW deniers. But you share the same desire to insult me rather than to respond to what I wrote and attempt to refute anything I wrote. So I will have to assume 100% agreement with what I wrote in my prior comment here.
The warming since 1975 was not “tiny”
The inability to determine exactly how much of the post-1975 warming was caused by manmade CO2 emissions does NOT contradict the theory that more CO2 causes warming.
WRONG
calling people DENIERS is an insult
you are the source of “back and forth” insults
you are indeed arrogant- I’ll stand by that- it’s your privilege of course
I bet 90% of the “regulars” here will agree it causes SOME part of the increase but some think it’s very small and more focus needs to be put on other sources- if in fact there is even a problem at all- if it’s mostly natural variation, then there’s nothing we can do about it. There is as of now no reason to think there is an “emergency”.
The only real emergency is that our civilization thinks highly of Mickey Mann. A recent PBS story, that I mentioned earlier today- in one of the threads- 100% supported Mann.
I don’t DENY that you have absolutely no scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2.
It is YOU that is in DENIAL of that fact.
All ever manage is a call to the ANTI-SCIENCE of consensus.
It is almost as though YOU KNOW that is all you have.
We await yet another load of zero-science blathering and ranting.
Dickie-bot… the AGW cultist. CO2 warming is a religion to him.
Scientific ability up there with John Kerr or Al Gore !.
Found that thin layer of CO2 yet, dickie. !
“The warming since 1975 was not “tiny”
The inability to determine exactly how much of the post-1975 warming was caused by manmade CO2 emissions does NOT contradict the theory that more CO2 causes warming.”
CO2 does not have a discerable effect on the Earth’s temperatures.
There’s no evidence that more CO2 will cause a discernable effect.
The warming since 1975 could be caused by things other than CO2, like Mother Nature. CO2 may just be along for the ride, a coincidental rise of CO2 along with a rise in temperatures. Historically, CO2 levels follow temperature rises, they don’t lead them.
There is no evidence the current situation is otherwise.
You are assuming too much.
“The warming since 1975 was not “tiny”
A few tenths of a degree is hardly large.
It doesn’t occur to people that the recorded values for the climatological day are actually hourly averages. So, if the recorded value for the hour is 59°F, a 1°C increase would just make the recorded value an average of 60.8°F. No thermometer can detect that difference, and certainly no human, animal, or ecosystem can either. There’s no possible way that is enough to overcome Earth’s natural cycles. CO2 is nothing but great news. We are doing Mother Nature a favor.
“the theory that more CO2 causes warming.”
There is no such theory. The radiation physics of CO₂ is not a valid theory of climate.
That is a meaningful consensus, except to the AGW deniers here.
You started with that “non insulting” comment !
1/400 is large?
For a tiny brain…… it may be a lot…. SCNR 😀
When you look at a Willis Eschenbach’s post on ‘Cooling The Hothouse’ (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/15/cooling-the-hothouse/) and his:
“Scatterplot of CENOGRID Temperature vs. Log of Atmospheric CO2 from 67 million years ago to present” it’s hard to see any correlation between CO2 and temperature in the historic record. One commenter (Peter Tari) did suggested that “There is an almost linear correlation between atmospheric CO2 level and temperature between -5° and 0° Celsius anomaly that is between the temperature of the Ice Age and the temperature at present.” And, I know MODTRAN says that increasing CO2 will cause more warming, but it’s still rather speculative considering the history as depicted in Wills’ graph. One thing is certain: there is a lot we don’t know about the climate.
Willis did a good job of demonstrating that there is no cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and temperature over that last 63 million years. I have demonstrated that taking into account the spurious correlations often found in time-series, that there is no demonstrable correlation over the last several decades. Similarly, I have demonstrated that there is no notable correlation between the decline in anthropogenic CO2 in 2020, and temperature, and probably the cause-and-effect are inverted as the seasonal ramp-up phase is amplified during warm El Nino events.
The inability to determine exactly how much of the post-1975 warming was caused by manmade CO2 emissions does NOT contradict the theory that more CO2 causes warming.
Show me the difference between CO2 and man made CO2. In an other thread you told of two different processes they cause. I still wait for an answer… 😀
There is no empirical evidence that increasing atmospheric CO2 drives the Earth’s temperature.
The ” theory” (actually hypothesis) that it does is based on the foundational assumption, “all other things held equal.” Which they have never been, are not now, and will never be.
So people who don’t “believe” CO2 has any significant effect on the Earth’s temperature are NOT “deniers” since the hypothesis remains unsupported by observations of reality.
On the contrary, there is empirical support for the notion that its hypothetical effect is canceled by the negative, offsetting feedbacks of the climate system.
Until you can explain, for example, why the Earth’s temperature consistently begins RISING while atmospheric CO2 levels are (a) FALLING and (b) near their LOW point, and why the Earth’s temperature consistently starts FALLING while atmospheric CO2 levels are (a) RISING and (b) near their HIGH point, per the ice core reconstructions, then you aren’t on the “high ground” you seem to think you are when it comes to “science.”
The two paragraphs above, by Joseph, put your claim about not refuting you, to the lie. It says a lot about you when you resort to complaints about trivial, shallow things like Einstein’s grooming and choice of clothes. Maybe you should apply for the position of ‘Miss Manners.’ You behave as though you think you have qualifications for it.
Einstein’s letter to FDR, suggesting that it might be possible to make a bomb from fissioning nuclei, directly led to a weapon that saved millions of lives on both sides. Have you ever done anything in your life that is comparable, that would justify you denigrating him? You are a buffoon who has an inflated opinion of your understanding of science!
Stop whining.
The greenhouse effect also has cooling as an extremely important component. Net cooling may, in fact, be the more important part.
AndyHce,
If you were to be correct, that increasing atmospheric co2 was believed to be cooling the planet, the policy would not change, we must just stop oil to save the planet, but from an ice age rather than global boiling.
please spare the UFOs are only swamp gas comments, which just make the commenters appear to be stupid
better to say nothing and be thought stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
many people claim all UFO sightings and radar tracks are swamp gas, weather balloons and just about anything except what the military pilots claims to have seen. Those of us who believe there is sufficient evidence to prove UFOs are from other planets often get attacked and ridiculed,
Rather than this long explanation those of us in Michigan often say: “Please don’t tell us they were swamp gas”, as was actually done here in Michigan by authorities in the 1990s
There is as much evidence to prove UFOs are from other planets as there is that CO2 is the cause of our global boiling problem. Now I get where you are coming from and things make much more sense.
Thank you for clarifying.
Richard, you said up above: “Tens of thousands of military pilots, since the 1940s, have witnessed unidentified objects in the sky”
Is that really a good number? I know that a number of pilots have reported such sightings, but tens of thousands?
I will be much more interested in UFO’s when I see a nice, very clear picture of one. I haven’t seen one so far. All we get are fuzzy objects difficult to identify and now with the internet, we don’t know if it is a legitimate picture or computer generated. I see a lot of UFO’s on Facebook that look suspciously like the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars fame.
I won’t rule other intelligent life out, but have seen no evidence of anything intelligent from another planet as of yet.
Mr. Abbott: Well, if your credibility is gone, you cite authority, and “tens of thousands” is so authoritative.
Oh, and you change the subject to UFOs, because you want folks to think you’re batshlt nuts.
Speaking of UFO sightings and pics, can anyone explain why disc or oval shaped craft claimed to have originated from un-Earthly places need to bank when they’re turning?
Or, for that matter, why a supremely advanced race with technologies far in advance of our own still needs to get around in the intergalactic equivalent of a golf buggy? Why not instantaneous teleportation across the universe?
Obviously this is a light-hearted, mildly humorous post and I am not attempting to solicit serious feedback, thank you.
Jaysus Richard.
Be careful what you write.
Trudeau will be offering $billion grants for companies to produce these instantaneous teleportation golf buggies in Ontario before we know it.
You must be watching 1950s science fiction movies.
Are there newer ones?
Only bad remakes.
That covers about 90% of the movies out of Hollywood.
The other 10% are not so bad remakes.
Well there have been some good ones.
I’m shocked that one of the best has never been redone, in particular given what CGI could do to make it truly terrifying, even if they didn’t make the subject matter quite so big as the “originals” (THEM).
It is by no means certain that the level of CO2 has increased at all since pre-industrial times unless like the IPCC, you ignore all contrary evidence that doesn’t suit your narrative:
https://friendsofscience.org/library-climate-science/?categories=CO%E2%82%82+History+
Consensus be damned.
The local CO2 chemical measurements in urban areas are not representative of the global average CO2 level.
This myth should have died long ago.
There is no credible evidence in ice cores or elsewhere to refute the claim of rising CO2 since about 20000 years ago, and especially after 1975.
You are a reality denier/
In this case they are, as Maassen was able to calculate the chemical measurments down to background level as wind directions and strength have been measured too.
Maassens publication about was declared as best poster publication at AAAs meeting.
Sorry for typing Massen wrong, here the paper:
Accurate estimation of CO 2 background level from near
ground measurements at non-mixed environments
Abstract
Atmospheric CO 2 background levels are sampled and processed according to the standards of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Earth System Research Laboratory mostly at marine environments to minimize the local influence of vegetation, ground or anthropogenic sources. Continental measurements usually show large diurnal and seasonal variations, which makes it difficult to estimate well mixed CO2 levels.
Historical CO 2 measurements are usually derived from proxies, with ice cores being the favorite. Those done by chemical methods prior to 1960 are often rejected as being inadequate due too poor siting, timing or method. The CO2 versus wind speed plot represents a simple but valuable tool for validating modern and historic continental data. It is shown that either a visual or a
mathematical fit can give data that are close to the regional CO 2 background, even if the average local mixing ratio is much different.
The near 100% consensus that a greenhouse effect exists and CO2 is part of it is such a consensus. It began in 1896 and has had a long time for scientists to refute it. They have failed.
Short on the point:
Both items completely wrong.
Hairy Krishna, an AGW denier, lives in another universe, where nearly 100% of scientists are wrong and he, apparently a armchair scientist and legend in his own mind, is right.
Poor dickie, only phrase he has is “100% of scientists”
Its hilarious and make his sound like a rabid AGW cultist.
Consensus is NOT science. Dickie has NO SCIENCE.
Are you blowing hot air or can you point to a study that confirms your 100% statement?
Mr. Ollie: He can’t be blowing hot air, because (correct me if I’m wrong) there’s no way to heat an utterly content-free vacuum (i.e., he doesn’t produce air, either. Utterly content -free). A hopeless case.
Only part of a hint for you 😀
160 Papers Find Extremely Low CO2 Climate Sensitivity(a) Quantified Low Climate Sensitivity to Doubled CO2
100+ Papers – Sun Drives Climate
I have no idea where you live, I like my state on Earth.
He resides in Southeast Michigan, constantly complaining about the frigid winters. He’s so desperate for warmth that he’s convinced himself CO2 is the mastermind behind global warming, all in the hope that his beloved winters will transform into a tropical paradise where snowfall is non-existent.
Still totally lacking in evidence to support warming by atmospheric CO2, hey dickie-bot…
… so you have to ride the anti-science of consensus, it is all you have.
It is still a baseless non-science conjecture that has never been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.
Apparantly you are not familiar with or perhaps do not understand the AGW-Greenhouse Effect literature or you would not mock “AGW deniers”.
As an AGW theory believer how to do dismiss various observations such as lack of correlation between surface temperature and CO2 from the present back for hundreds of thousands of years. Or the fact that CO2 follows temperature. Or the fact that the AGW theory cannot explain the atmospheric behavior of planets with nearly 100% CO2. Or … As Feynman said:
The AGW theory does not agree with experiement. It’s wrong.
However, whether or not CO2 can absorb and re-emit IR is not being questioned seriously. That is fundamentally part of a straw man argument. The applicable question is, “What is the net effect of increasing CO2 (delta x) on the change in temperature (delta y) in a complex system of feedback loops that are almost certainly negative loops, in whole. The best estimate of the answer to the question is what is commonly called the “climate sensitivity,” which has had a median estimate of about 3 deg C for the last 40 years, and has recently increased. A sub-question is whether the climate sensitivity is constant over the range of temperatures experienced on Earth. It is generally accepted that the climate sensitivity is related linearly to the logarithm of the CO2 concentration. Might it be that the temperature also has an effect on the estimated climate sensitivities?
“climate sensitivity is related linearly to the logarithm of the CO2 concentration”??
but this is what joe public doesn’t get. The effect diminshes exponentially! The higher the concentration, the less warming.
While there is almost certainly an effort by the ‘news’ media to misinform the public, Hanlon’s Razor, which states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity,” is a very reasonable explanation of why the public doesn’t get it, because professional, know-nothing wordsmiths, rarely have an acquaintance with logarithms.
What Clyde wrote…
Most of joe public can’t add 12 and 13, much less understand what a logarithm is.
Mr. Greene says:”It began in 1896 and has had a long time for scientists to refute it. They have failed.”
Angstrom said Aarhenius was wrong. What did Angstrom get wrong?
When I was working in reliability testing, I learned there was a rule-of-thumb attributed to Arrhenius about activation energies of degradation mechanisms which led to him being given the nickname “Erronius”.
More importantly, the AGW cheerleaders always summarily ignore the MOST IMPORTANT thing, and the most accurate thing, the great Arrhenius said.
Which was that IF humanity could manage to warm the Earth’s climate by adding CO2 to the atmosphere (IF, since he recognized that the effect of CO2 on temperature was PURELY HYPOTHETICAL), that IT WOULD IMPROVE THE CLIMATE (because WARMER is BETTER, NOT WORSE).
So even what their hero said is SELECTIVELY referred to. Even from the prognostications of their hero, they STILL HAVE TO CHERRY PICK to make it sound like it supports their argument.
UFOs? Heh. I think the current preferred term is UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomenon).
If there is “consensus” how can it be contemporary if sharing any contradicting theory is prohibited misinformation ?
Krishna ==> Exactly what Pielke jr. is warning us all about. Just a normal “consensus view” — say of pediatricians view that kids and guns is a bad mix, based on the evidence of kids dying from gun-related accidents — is a fine thing. It just means that most pediatricians agree about that.
That kind of “general agreement” consensus is a far cry from the types of Enforced Consensus in CliSci or PM2.5 science.
I have a feeling that most sane people would agree that guns and unsupervised kids do not mix, it shouldn’t take a pediatrician to figure that out.
Richard ==> You would think….but a close look at U.S. gun laws reads otherwise. In NY State, all guns MUST be under lock-and-key in a suitable Gun Safe.
Accidental gun deaths, in all age groups, have been declining for decades, and started well before the move to keep guns under lock and key. However, a larger number of deaths, of what are euphemistically called ‘children’ or ‘kids,’ are adolescents, commonly associated with inner-city gangs, and are involved with illicit drug distribution. They are not legally allowed to possess guns, but have no difficulty stealing them or buying them on the Black Market. The biggest problem, however, is an increase in suicides among minors. Our national suicide rate is approaching the historically high rate of Japan, where none of the suicides are committed with a gun. Japan demonstrates that is it easy to substitute other means and that there is no reasonable expectation that even eliminating guns will result in a significant decline in suicides.
What gets little press, is that ‘accidental’ deaths from opioid overdoses, many of which may well be suicides without a note, have reached a level of nearly 110,000 per year! For comparison, the FBI UCR estimates that there were 13,663 firearm murders (most of which are probably in support of the illicit drug trade), about 700 justifiable firearm homicides, and Injury (Accident) Facts NSC cite 535 accidental firearm deaths, and 24,292 firearm suicides in all age groups in 2020. Clearly, suicides are a problem, but about one-quarter of the opioid deaths. Focusing on the availability of firearms is misdirected. Justifiable firearm homicides exceed the accidental firearm deaths, and reducing the ready access to a gun will probably result in fewer justifiable homicides, with a concomitant increase in murders. What needs to be done is address the reasons for increasing suicides, regardless of method. Similarly, the large number of handgun murders related to the drug trades needs to be addressed. Locking up guns is a bandage approach that doesn’t take in the big picture.
Clyde ==> Yes, gang kids killing gang kids, but still some accidental deaths and woundings with regular kids playing with Dad’s or Uncle Jim’s gun.
The Opioid deaths get press where I am– maybe because I have been actively following the issue for more than a decade.
The larger gun issues I will leave to others — too hot button for a site like this.
Yes, politicians want the populace defenseless – requiring them to be in “gun safes” or to have locked “trigger guards” is tantamount to them not being “in hand” and/or ready to use until it’s too late.
And when disagreeing with it can get you fired or demoted or losing your research funding.
Or your bank account canceled.
There are almost no scientists denying the greenhouse theory and they do get published online, or else we would not know they existed. In my opinion their theories are junk science. Nearly 100% of scientists agree with me, or i agree with them
Back radiation is measured. Especially easy to do at night. Een in your own backyard. Denying that something so easily measured exists, is crackpot science.
There is no “back” radiation, just radiation, and it comes from everything, always.
Planck’s law.
You are being profoundly dishonest here since nearly everyone agrees that CO2 absorbs some IR and that it emits some of as “back radiation” a misleading term, but YOU seem to say the very opposite.
That is why you are being increasingly disliked as your lies are getting stupider and tedious.
“…that it emits some of as “back radiation”…”
Not in the troposphere, it doesn’t, where collisional decay is orders of magnitude faster than radiative decay.
“collisional decay is orders of magnitude faster than radiative decay” took me a little bit of time to wrap my head around it when Roy Spencer mentioned that in his ode to the sky dragons. After giving some thought to the radiative process, i.e. Maxwell’s equations and quantum theory of electromagnetic radiation, the longer time constant for radiative decay made perfect sense.
Having said that, there will be radiative flux coming from a parcel of air due to CO2 molecules being excited from collisions – and this radiation will be coming from all the directions where there’s something on the order of a photon’s mean free path of air (think black body).
I saved this snip from a Pat Frank comment of nearly a year ago because it made sense to me:
“The radiant energy is absorbed (by CO₂) and then lost by collisional decay. Right up to the stratosphere, 15 μ vibrationally excited CO₂ decays by collision, not re-radiation.
The energy lost to collision is then dispersed into the KE of the atmospheric gases and thereby becomes one with the overall black body radiation field. Then, it gets radiated away into space, but across all the TOA BB wavelengths.”
My take on this is that radiation from CO2 molecules is not significant until they are transported up to the tropopause. Is this a conclusion you would agree with?
Thanks, Frank. I agree with you and still see it that way.
CO₂ molecules vibrationally excited by collision in the troposphere should still lose their energy by collision.
So far as I can see, apart from incoming solar, the tropospheric radiation bath is purely black body reflecting the kinetic energy of atmospheric gases.
100% is not demonstrated.
Radiative Greenhouse Effect warming the earth violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. How do you get around that?
Mr. Ollie: He’ll get around it with ignorance. He doesn’t grasp the 2d law you reference. I barely grasp it, I’ll confess, but Mr. Greene has not come across it.
You would consider your opinion to be superior to that of Nobel Laureate John Clauser? Your arrogance is again showing.
SO you are measuring radiation from condensing H2O
Co2 does not radiate at a frequency that can be measured by a hand held device.
OMG.. you really have drunk copious amounts of brain-damaging KKA (klimate-Kool-Aids)
The current approach is Stalinist Lysenkoism, the desire to settle scientific disputes by throwing doubters in the Gulag.
Tom ==> Or more commonly today, and sometimes worse, character or career assassination in the press or on the blogs.
Kip, did you read the February 8th posting by Judith Curry?
It was pretty funny.
You mean you didn’t read it..
Judith Curry is magnitudes more of a scientist than you ever have the capability to be.
Your comment is truly moronic.. but that is the only type you are the ability to make.
I don’t think ANY of it will get much traction, as long as it is obvious that those advocating it are living the high life and have no plans to change that, driving, flying, electricity, etc. Why should others make sacrifices when we do not accept their “science”?
I have zero respect for any alarmist who uses any ff or who buys any product made with it. If I actually thought this “emergency” was real, I’d move into a straw hut and only walk to get anywhere- and live only on pine nuts I find in the forest.
Like all the forestry haters who all live in nice wood homes loaded with fine wood furniture and tons of paper products. They really trigger my bad temper.
“And there you have it…. California passed a law that threatens the professional license of any medical professional who shares their professional opinion or any information that contradicts a “contemporary scientific consensus”.”
Similar to what happened to Jordon Peterson. He’s going to have to report to a re-education camp. I think he said he’ll do it just to have a chance to continue to challenge them.
Joseph ==> Yes, weird story that. Of course, Peterson has an entirely new career now as a speaker and writer — not dependent on his professional license. But still, it must be galling for him.
Just goes to show you, you can’t go on ranting that your professional peers are all idiots and are harming people and still be accepted as part of the group.
That’s a large part of the demonization of Climate Skeptics, even of well-respected (previously or otherwise) Climate Scientists.
I’d like to be a fly on the wall in Peterson’s “re-education” course when he’s stumping the “teacher” with questions that challa ge the whole class “narrative,” and watch the “teacher” version of Ralph Cramden’s “humna humna humna.”
Gavin Newsom is licensed and sells alcohol to the public in his San Francisco wine store Plumpjack.
It is a scientific consensus and known to the State of California under proposition 65 that alcohol consumption causes cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx, liver, breast, colon and rectum.
As long as he posts a sign in his store stating that it is known to the State of California that alcohol causes cancer, his license cannot be revoked. I have not met a California physician yet who has recommended against getting any vaccination.
I would argue that consensus is valid iff that consensus is obtained from multiple matching observations. For example, the Ptolemy view of the universe became the consensus because there were no contrary observations at that time, despite the fact that the model became very complex and it matched the dogma of the time of an anthropocentric universe. When Copernicus provided evidence for a different model that was simpler and explained the observations then that should have made the consensus redundant, but the consensus had become dogma.
There is a consensus that at the moment Einstein’s theories are still, in general, valid, but that position is not dogmatic as exceptions are postulated in certain cases.
The problem is that climate change being due to human carbon dioxide emissions HAS become a dogma, thus reflecting the same attitude that prevailed towards the Ptolemaic view of the universe, even down to the anthropocentricity of it.
JohnC ==> The question is not “Can there be a valid consensus?” Of course there can, but it will only be that – a consensus that is really generally agreed upon. What it will not be is TRUTH. It might be all-caps true, it might be lower-case true, it might seemingly be true, it might possibly be true, it might be true as far as we can tell at this point in time…..
The Critical Thinking error is this: “The Contemporary Scientific Consensus = Truth”
And you can bet your bottom dollar that if there is an Enforced Consensus is it NOT true — if it were true, there would be no need for enforcement.
But what is truth? Is truth absolute? Surely something is true until it isn’t?
JohnC ==> Absolute Truth is not a matter of science, but of religion/philosophy/meta-physics. I have things which to me are Absolute Truths, but are not discussed here, because this is a science-oriented site. “What am I?”, “Where did I come from?”, “What happens to me when I die?”, “Who is in charge here anyway?” are not for science — in fact, are expressly ruled outside of the purview of Science.
Science deals with things of which we are not and will not be sure of — we will constantly be in a state of “finding out”.
Mathematics, however, being what it is, can have such “truths” (all trivial because they are true by definition and never have been in doubt) 2+2=4.
It is the difference between deduction, which is the elucidation of conclusions that are implicit in the axiomatic premises, as in IF a and b THEN c=d…
..versus induction or inference, which is the real Sherlock Holmes process (It is NOT deduction), of inferring causes from effects in the real world…in short, science.
Truths in deduction are implicit, provable and trivial.
There are no truths in inference. Only probable cause. The moment you hear the phrase ‘scientific proof’, you know you are not talking to a top rate scientist.
Scientists use the scientific method to disprove conjecture.
Period.
Any other invocation of the scientific method is not science and the purveyors of those invocations are not scientists.
It IS that simple.
The laws of physics are a good place to start. Regarding the greenhouse effect, 1st 2nd laws of thermodynamics, Stefan-Boltzmann, Beer-Lambert, Kirchhoff’s laws,modes of heat transfer, free space propagation of electromagnetic radiation, are as sound as Newton’s laws of motion and celestial mechanics that allow Mars landings.
Climate is chaotic. Would you board a moon rocket if your forecast trajector(ies) looked like this?
Yes, if I had a death wish! 🙂
I think Wittgenstein said it best – it is ‘Whatever is the case’.
This presupposes a reality beyond the minds of the Liberal Left Bandar Log.
Leo ==> Thanks for sharing the wisdom of Rudyard Kipling.
Add to that the important point that the supposed “consensus” is not nearly so “overwhelming” as the zealots promoting it as “meaningful” (which it is most certainly not) would have you believe.
Each of the “studies” that supposedly support the notion of overwhelming “consensus” are crap at every level, from asking questions so broad and non-specific about supposed “consequences” as to be meaningless to “selection” of which responses “count.”
And there are lots of scientists wary to reveal any skepticism about the AGW propaganda because they know full well the inquisition and excommunication that will surely follow.
Eisenhower warned us, and he was a prophet. Government funded science ha descended into politicized bullshit.
I would disagree on this, I’m afraid. You are confusing a broad agreement and no evidence to the contrary, with a political consensus. Any and all scientific theories, facts or widely held views can be amended or overturned by just one scientist with valid evidence. Consensus can only be changed when the majority understand a different thing, then the consensus view moves to this new thing. There may be broad agreement in science but not consensus.
There are no politicians whose jobs require that Einstein’s theories be considered “correct”.
There are a few egos who’s maintenance requires such a belief.
And, physicists and astronomers continue to test Einstein’s theories to see if they can break them — to no avail.
Interesting photo.
Fauci’s “follow the science” on one side; Sharyl Attkisson’s ‘Follow the Science’, an expose of the pharmaceutical industry, on the other.
For Fauci’s sake, good to keep them apart.
K.F. ==> The image was borrowed from Matt Briggs’ substack, with his permission.
This is the crux of reason and critical thought. The process of scientific exploration is one where people seek truths about their world while inhibiting their own tendencies to reach conclusions based on anything other than objective evidence. We are however programmed to react and make decisions emotionally and often out of a search for comfort or escape from fear. When people try to impose “truths” on others which are really just desired beliefs, they are doing so to seek some benefit for themselves such as power, wealth or even just a sense of being right without doing the hard work to discover what is most likely true based on evidence.
When we select leaders to make decisions for us, we appear to lean heavily on that emotional decision-making, focusing on superficial appearance and our feelings about what that means. We fail to do the work of examining all the evidence of someone’s ability to do rational analysis and make decisions based on objective evidence of cause and effect, and what is best for the governed.
The Western democracies are presently in a crisis because of our failure as voters to use objective evidence and critical thought to select those who will make decisions that affect every aspect of our lives and our welfare. This is why we have leaders who think it just fine to tell us what we are allowed to say, what we are allowed to do and what we are allowed to think, regardless of what is most likely true based on evidence.
Andy ==> Yes…and in our own defense, we often are presented with cases (almost always, actually) in which we need to make a provisional decision of what to think or how to act re: “whatever” — under conditions of insufficient evidence. To do that rationally, one needs a very good general education and a very good understanding of how the world/universe/life works.
One can’t think critically in a state of near-total ignorance.
People in the U.S. spend BILLIONS of dollars on worthless nostrums — vitamins and supplements and health aids — that literally will do absolutely nothing to improve their health or well-being. Not only that, it has been proven over and over again, and published widely, that these things do not help in any way. Yet people still spend those BILLIONS that could go to educating their kids instead. Why? Because they do not understand human physiology. University courses are available FREE to teach them — their local Community College etc — yet they remain happily ignorant.
Absolutely agree with all your points. The role of education should be to provide a working knowledge of those things we believe are understood about the natural and human world (evidenced based, not dogma), provide tools for investigation, discovery and critical thought and the basic skills of math and logic, as well as an understanding of the many ways we and others fool us into believing things unsupported by evidence.
As you mention a vast array of useless pseudo-health promoters could be removed from the market and people would be wealthier, healthier and freer to use their resources for things that matter. As a physician recently retired from clinical practice I am amazed that the evidence of what drives human health and longevity is so often ignored in favour of what people can sell to others under the guise of improving health. The entire medical system I worked in for 37 years is largely aligned around incentives for those who make money from the system (Doctors, nurses, other medical practitioners, unions, administrators, health service organizations, pharmaceutical and device companies and all the alternative solutions field).
When we look closely at the evidence health is determined by factors largely unrelated to the health care industry:
I would strongly recommend people interested in taking control of their own health to read Blue Zones – a great investigation of what the common characteristics are of some of the healthiest, longest lived and most functionally populations on our planet. The health care system doesn’t figure into it at all.
In all other areas of human policies that matter, learning how to think critically and seek the evidence behind the conclusions will never be wasted time when you want to decide who you wish to make policies that will determine the quality of your life and that of your children and grandchildren.
Andy ==> Nice summation. Thanks.
Only if you want to live longer. Why is it that everyone assumes that living the longest time possible is the goal that everyone should have?
Burning your candle at both ends also has advantages. No more tax increases, no wheelchairs, no drooling and no incontinence. Plus, you get more light before you go blind.
I disagree. The point of Blue Zones isn’t simply longevity. The study is more about health and quality of life. They looked at people who lived to 100 years because that was indicative of health and functionality, not just longevity. The populations studied had high functionality, great social integration and purpose and were generally happy satisfied individuals.
It was obvious throughout my years of practice that early death was linked to a lot of chronic disease both physical and mental which was in turn dependent on fundamental problems with the life styles people fall into. I am not saying people should be forced into an ideal lifestyle and certainly not by the fools we put in government these days.
The point is that people who want to live a good life, with the minimum of illness, injury and mental stress can make decisions for themselves based on what we know about healthy living, and can have that life they seek, often with minimal or no dependence on an expensive, complex, dangerous and poorly delivering health industry.
I wonder what the contemporary consensus is on selective memory loss when under criminal investigation…
You know the thing.
Shytot ==> That, my friend, is a basic self-protection instinct. or the beginnings of “old-timers disease” in certain un-named politicians.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Officer. 😉
Nor does he.
I would guess that it is a reference to the Hur report regarding Biden’s possession of classified documents.
I’d guess. Seems a bit extreme for a POTUS to feign memory loss (which makes him seem senile and unfit to serve as POTUS) when he could just agree that he took ’em and pardon himself later? My money is on the side of his senility being real.
Of course, it is. You’re probably also a firm believer in UFOs, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, the Abominable Snowman, and the entire fantasy collection.
Nasty little child once again makes assumptions regarding what other believe based only on the fact that those others have offended him by refuting what he wants to believe.
And you believe in unicorn farts.., and the big bad wolf.
And CO2 warming.
The entire fantasy collection.
Politics sure live rent free in your head.
So a Biden apologist makes silly comments about politics. The Hur report stated multiple cases of classified document violations. I was a Navy pilot. If I mishandled even one classified document, I’d be in jail. Neither Biden nor Hillary are facing charges. The rest of us “little people” would go to jail for years. Hur wouldn’t even prosecute the Rosenbergs. This is a major coverup by your despicable government.
I’m guessing that you are up past your bed time. I was’t aware that it was possible to make less than no sense, yet you have managed it.
Are you Simon? You sure sound like it.
I think Simon is probably twice the IQ of this little twerp…. but still sub-50.
I think Simon has grown tired of being embarrassed, as a result he’s limiting himself to drive by sniping.
Oh dear, the Mann loving trolls have moved on to this thread.
Looks like they’ve been on the P HACKER quick wit and repartee course – lots of name calling and “nasty” implications.
The consensus appears to be that brow beating is the debating tool of choice for cults
They are now struggling to keep their group kookgasm going.
In California this may be used against alternative medicine, like ayuvedic-yoga- etc. We will see how long it lasts.
It’s already been struck down by the courts.
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It will be brought up again and again with different wording, different courts and different judges until it passes. Marxism has been steadily pushed for well over
a century. The Max Horkheimer quote applies:
“The Revolution won’t happen with guns, rather it will happen
incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will
gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political
offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we
move towards universal egalitarianism.” – – – – Max Horkheimer
Ptolemy (born c. 100 ce—died c. 170 ce) was an Egyptianastronomer, mathematician, and geographer of Greek descent who flourished in Alexandria during the 2nd century ce. In several fields his writings represent the culminating achievement of Greco-Roman science, particularly his geocentric (Earth-centred) model of the universe now known as the Ptolemaic system.
Ptolemy’s science was the scientific consensus for over 1000 years.
Excellent example. I remember my history of science prof mentioning astrologers getting frustrated by the poor predictions of planetary positions coming from calculation based the Ptolemy’s model. The consensus (paradigm) was that the predictions could be improved if they could only find the “True Ptolemy”. It was when Copernicus focused on the heliocentric model, when followed Tycho’s improved measurements and then Kepler’s coming up with his laws of orbit when Copernicus’s model didn’t fit the data that forecasts of planetary positions became accurate.
doonman and Erik ==> Yet, Ptolemy was operating on the best evidence available to him and thus his Pr(Y|E) (Earth-centric solar system/universe) looked good for a very long time.
It took other, harder to discover, evidence to shake that view, which had become the consensus, because the consensus was based on “the best of our present evidence.”
And that is how is should be.
Consensus is not a dirty word and not a horrible principle. we could not have sent a man to the Moon without a consensus of rocket scientists on how to do so. and, their consensus view of how to do that was at least workable (even if not absolutely true).
“Looked good for a very long time” is what Kuhn meant by his use of “paradigm” in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. BTW, my history of science prof was Kuhn’s grad student when writing the book.
Paradigms/consensus can be very useful, but they are not the same as “The Truth”. One of Kuhn’s later grad students took offense at Kuhn’s insistence of no absolute truths in science and wrote a column for SciAm proposing that Kuhn’s approach to science helped Trump get elected in 2016. A real stretch, IMO.
Which Ptolemy? I’ve just had to wade through all the Ptolemies in the Ptolemaic dynasty (17 or 18) then found out it was Claudius Ptolemy. Any chance you could’ve used his first name at all?
When it comes to history of science, Claudius Ptolemy was probably the only one that mattered.
No, they should append their Pr(Y|E) with their best guess on the uncertainty envelope or probable range +/- 2-sigma. No measurement is exact, and even constants like Pi have an unending series of digits, wherein the truncation of, for practical use, establish the effective precision or uncertainty envelope.
Clyde ==> Hmmmm…. in Briggs’ view, I the the result is a probability, not a numerical answer. More like “Almost surely True” and not like “Global Temperature today was 14.44444444444444°C”.
For numerical answers, you are absolutely correct, certainly uncertainty bars, ranges, sigmas etc are required.
Kip, OK, assuming that Briggs had in mind qualitative probabilities, unless they are carefully defined with a numerical range, nobody will agree on what is meant by “almost surely true.” The numerical range of the definition becomes the end-points of the uncertainty range and the mid-range value the nominal average. One can’t get away from assigning numbers unless they intend the claim to be ambiguous.
“…nearly all research that involves statistics is deeply saturated in scientism.“
Perhaps, more accurately, all scientism that involves research is deeply saturated in statistics.
Pat Frank ==> An egg-and-chicken causality problem, that. I have often been guilty here at WUWT of seeming to be “anti-statistics” (or even, according to some, “anti-numbers”) But what I really am is staunchly pragmatic and anti-scientism.
The use and mis-use of statistical principles certainly leads to a lot of nonsense, in either case.
Pr(Y|E)
======
E is generally increasing. As a result the probability of a scientific theory being right or wrong will almost ertainly change over time.
ferd ==> Ah, “E is generally increasing” — If the new evidence supports the proposition “Y is true”, then it is “increasing”. If the new evidence, however, supports “Y is not true” — then E is decreasing.
It can go both ways — there may be quantitatively more evidence about Y but the quality and the direction of the evidence can be for, against, or neutral.
Consider dark energy and dark matter. One just might as well talk about dark climate or dark weather.
Dark climate explains why climate models don’t predict reliably and dark weather is why the weather guessor gets it wrong so often.
Dark Climate: causes the difference between climate theory and observations.
ferd ==> That’s very dark…..
[But I agree about ‘dark matter and energy’ , just a place marker for “stuff we don’t yet understand. ]
I don’t think understand this statement. For it to have any meaning it would have to be the case that something very close to 100% of that group has the same viewpoint and has come to the same conclusion. It cannot be based on majority because that could mean the group is divided almost 50/50, such as 50.1% say yes, 49.9% say no. Very close to 100% may occur sometime, somewhere, but 22% say yes, 14% say no, the rest don’t even make an effort, is much more often closer to reality.
AndyHce ==> You ever work with a group, say at work, trying to make a decision about to do about “whatever” when it is not clear what is best?
I have many times. At IBM, we would convene a large group of both managers and tech people concerned, we would discuss, several ideas would be proposed, they would be discussed….I would usually start a fight or two (not acceptable, but I can be quite stern about what is best) …. then when everyone calmed (me) down, more discussion, If the group was satisfied we had all the data we were likely to be able to get in the present moment, a compromise position (action plan) would be suggested, modified by discussion ( a few more fights started by me) and in the end, someone would say “How about this then?” And after some grumbles, a general agreement, a consensus, would be reached and that would be the decision. Not unanimity, but a broad general agreement, “we can live with that”, everyone doesn’t 100 % agree, but they agree to go along with the group’s decision.
Coming up with something that everyone can at least agree with.
That is consensus building in the workplace.
Consensus does not and cannot create truth.
It sounds like your experience with consensus is sharing blame for the solution proposed from an ill-defined problem, or insufficient facts available.
“The California law, mentioned at the beginning of the essay, has been repealed, after being shot down by the courts.” This was going to be my first question, I could not see how this law could be viable given your Constitution.
Nansar07 ==> The law was not compatible with our Constitution, you are exactly right, and thus ruled the Court. The question is “How could a majority of California’s lawmakers not know they were passing a law that was so obviously unconstitutional?”
The answer: “That’s California for you.”
Run by democrats for decades.
Run down by Democrats for decades.
BTW, they are Democrats, not democrats. Nothing democratic about any of them.
I purposely did not capitalize “Democrats” out of disrespect.
I think it’s more that they didn’t care that it was unconstitutional. They were voting for it because they most likely agreed with it and knew that it would be good campaign fodder.
Was it Pelosi or Feinstein, who when asked what the constitutional basis for ObamaCare was, responded “Are you kidding me?”
I think it was Feinstein who advocated passing it to find out what was in it.
I recall it being Nasty Pelosi.
That’s what I remember too.
“This was going to be my first question, I could not see how this law could be viable given your Constitution.”
A law is constitutional until a court rules it unconstitutional. For that to happen, someone has to file a law suit or try a case involving the law. Politicians try to pass unconstitutional laws all the time. And there are many political judges on the courts.
Kip – good article! Your reference to statements by professional societies about things outside their discipline brings to mind the climate position statement of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) to which I have belonged for many years.
An excerpt:
*************
**************
This made me nearly choke. What a blatant disregard for independent thought in a highly technical discipline! IMO, they had no business wading into this debatable and politicized “consensus” swamp.
The full position statement is here.
https://www.asme.org/about-asme/climate-change/position#:~:text=Support%20the%20global%20consensus%20of,and%20a%20carbon%20negative%20future
David ==> Sickening isn’t it? All that cow-towing to virtue signalling?
I think it’s kow-towing, kip. Cow-towing is what cowboys do.
Richard ==> Spell-check failures…. ?
That should be kowtowing, unless your are talking about a bovine that needs repair. 🙂
ASME is hardly an outlier here, the same is true of the IEEE.
True, no doubt, for a great many similar alphabet organizations.
One of the classic examples of Consensus failure is still the proof by Drs Marshall and Warren, that ulcers were caused by bacteria and could be treated with success, giving the world two new Nobel Laureates in 2005.
Initially, the reporting stressed the 2 key people. Now, some 20 years later, internet reporting is more about how to treat ulcers, almost as if there never existed a solid consensus that ulcers were caused by stress and were hard to treat. There is little admission of “we were all wrong”, little mention of “we need to review our research methodology”, instead mostly a serene feeling that Consensus methodology is fine, so long as we cancel mention of its past failure and mandate its future use.
More than the ulcer patients are sick.
Geoff S
I have a bit of a connection with this story. From 1982 to 2010, I worked for Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals here in central NY. The predecessor company invented and produced Pepto-Bismol. It was Procter & Gamble that sponsored Marshall’s work.
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(16)30032-5/fulltext
The “consensus” was once that stomach ulcers were caused by stress, not bacteria.
The “consensues” was once that the Earth’s continents were fixed in place and never moved.
The “consensus” was once that the COVID 19 virus was a natural virus spread to humans from bats.
The “consensus” was once that blood letting was a cure for a list of diseases as long as your arm.
The “consensus” is meaningless in science. Claims of “consensus” are generally used to protect egos and defend ignorance and bad science.
Let us simplify some thoughts about consensus.
Scenario: A scientist creates a new hypothesis, example “Rising CO2 in the air causes larger human teeth size”. The common way this develops is for many people to measure tooth size changes over the years and calculate correlations with CO2 concentrations. As the results come in from here and there, some will show no correlation, some will show weak correlation, some will show strong correlation. (Experimental conditions are seldom uniform from lab to lab).After a while, reviewers might note that most of the results to date show strong correlation, so opposition to the hypothesis drops away. If a poll is taken, 99% of respondents (the magical poll number) might agree with the hypothesis.
This leads to what is being named “consensus”. But, it is not a rare feature, it does not imply something unprecedented about the hypothesis. It is simply the most common way that a new hypothesis gets older.
The damage comes when cash enters the equation. People smart enough to see that they can make a quid from products to push the hypothesis can play the consensus card; but more dangerously, they can harm the non-consensus part of the community by name calling (denier”), political and financial pressure, leading to what we have now in the “climate wars”.
Summary: Forget about consensus. It is an advertising industry concept, not much to do with scientific advancement.
Geoff S
It might be useful to look at the way consensus is established in the creation of what is known as “voluntary consensus standards”. This process is used by many organizations that produce commercial and industrial standard test methods, specification, procedures and practices. They are responsible for the vast majority of technical standards that provide the basis for fair global product trade and regulation.
The process is common and applies nearly universally on a global basis. The following requirements characterize the process:
This is indeed an onerous process and can take a long time. I’ve worked on several standards that took a decade or more to complete. It should also be noted that most standards bodies require a regular review and update of their published standards. Use of the standards and technical progress often result in recognition of short comings and errors.
When this process is followed, it is reasonable to claim consensus agreement because all objections are dealt with openly and transparently.
Rick ==> Thanks for that — do you have a link to an outline of that?
There are two large standards-writing bodies that are not generally open to “representation of all stakeholder interests classified as producers, users, consumers, general interest and acedemic”: these are the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) and its twin the ISO (International Standards Organization). Because of their links to international trade, IEC and ISO committees are instead organized by one vote per country, which is much different.
One aspect of this situation is the US versus Europe — each European country gets one vote, but the individual states comprising the USA do not, the USA as a whole gets just one vote.
And I know of an IEC committee that worked on a single standard for over 30 years. They had to break it up into 5 pieces to finally get it through, and after all that work it might as well be in a museum, essentially no one uses it.
karlo ==> Yes, we sure do have some weird groups that make rules and standards. The idea that one vote per NATION is democratic is just not correct. Hard to think of a better way — if it were per capita, India and China and Indonesia would rule.