Steven Dubner Digs the Hole Deeper
As misleading as the Superfreakonomics chapter on climate change seemed to me yesterday, the email that Steven Dubner sent to Brad DeLong really compounds the sin. Dubner whines that Joe Romm “makes it sound as if we somehow twisted and abused Caldeira’s research; nothing could be further from the truth.”
Go here and read for yourself pages 184, 185, and the beginning of page 186 of Suprefreakonomics. The point, quite clearly, is to lead you to believe that “hard-charging environment activist and all-around peacenik” Ken Caldeira share the Levitt/Dubner view that (a) environmentalists are overstating the extent of the climate change problem, (b) curbing carbon dioxide emissions should not be our main tool in combatting climate change, and (c) that it’s useful to disparagingly analogize advocates of CO2 emissions curbs to those driven by religious faith rather than scientific expertise. Caldeira is called onto the floor to speak as a voice of sober-minded science against the misguided CO2-limiters.
And here’s what Caldeira himself thinks about that:
[Caldeira] has responded to many email queries of mine over the weekend so I could characterize his views accurately. He simply doesn’t believe what the Superfreaks make it seem like he believes. He writes me:
If you talk all day, and somebody picks a half dozen quotes without providing context because they want to make a provocative and controversial chapter, there is not much you can do.
One sentence about Caldeira in particular is the exact opposite of what he believes (page 184):
Yet his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.
Levitt and Dubner didn’t run this quote by Caldeira, and when he saw a version from Myrhvold, he objected to it. But Levitt and Dubner apparently wanted to keep it very badly—it even makes their Table of Contents in the Chapter Five summary “Is carbon dioxide the wrong villain?” It fits their contrarian sensibility, but it makes no actual sense.
Caldeira aside, it would be one thing if Levitt and Dubner wanted to make the argument that they have reason to believe that most scientists are mistaken about the climate change situation. But instead they make the claim that most environmentalists are mistaken about the climate change situation and that it’s Levitt & Dubner who are channeling the views of the scientific community. But according to the Union of Concerned Scientists “the fifth chapter of the book, ‘Global Cooling,’ repeats a large number of easily discredited arguments regarding climate science, energy production, and geoengineering.”
Of course it’s possible that the UCS is mistaken about some matters. And it’s possible that Ken Caldeira is mistaken about some things. But it’s not possible that Levitt and Dubner are correctly representing the views of Caldeira or climate scientists in general. Nor is it possible that Levitt and Dubner are correct when they assert that photovoltaic cells are black (they’re usually blue) nor is it correct to say that black PV cells lead to net increases in global temperature. These mistakes. A mixture of bad science and bad reportage on a crucial public policy issue, done by a writing duo who became famous for clever statistical analysis of trivial matters.
73 Responses to “Steven Dubner Digs the Hole Deeper”
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October 17th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
As the Harvard labor economist George Borjas has noted, immigration is a major – if not the most important factor – in currently driving down American wages:
http://www.vdare.com/pb/071226_borjas.htm
October 17th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
When you can’t argue with the facts, you simply distort the facts. It’s the Republican way.
October 17th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Look, lets face facts. Anyone who is not a climate scientist is unqualified to comment on this matter. I am a physicist and know more about it than most, but what I know only teaches me how much I don’t know and I should leave the pontificating to people who know a great deal more than me.
There is actual cognitive research on this. Expertise is not transferable. Experts in one area are novices in all other areas, no matter how much they devoutly wish it to be otherwise.
Economists, in particular, seem to fall prey to this error. Perhaps it is because so many areas of science have an impact on economic matters, or perhaps it is mere ego and hubris. But the fact is that neither Levitt, Dubner, DeLong, Caldeira, nor Yglesias are qualified to hold an informed opinion.
This bothers me. I hate to say that we have to outsource our opinions to someone else, even an expert, but climatology is one of the two or three most difficult problems in the physical sciences, and if you haven’t spent your entire life immersed in that puzzle, you not only know a great deal less about it than you think you know, but in point of fact you don’t know anything at all.
To that extent, Dubner and Levitt are right. It IS faith. The only problem they have is that they don’t realize the same analysis applies to them as well. Being economists (especially being pop economists) does not in any way transform them into Superrennaissanceultrageniuses. Their opinion is no more or less relevant than that of the homeless guy who holds the door open at my neighborhood CVS at 3 AM.
October 17th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
My error. Ken Caldeira IS a climate scientist. His opinion is the only one that is relevant at all.
October 17th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I’m a little confused. What are Ken Caldeira’s actual views on the role of CO2 in climate change? I’m not yet sure that his views on CO2 are actually being misrepresented by Freakonomics. Anyone familiar with his real views?
October 17th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
To that extent, Dubner and Levitt are right. It IS faith.
Is it faith if I carry an umbrella out on a sunny morning because the weatherman said it’s going to rain in the afternoon? Only in the sense that I’m not relying on my own senses, but deferring to the opinion of someone else whose opinion I have reason to trust. But that’s not really faith – that’s having good judgment about which authorities to trust.
The problem with the slimate change debate is that most people aren’t equipped to make a good judgment about who to trust. The obvious answer would be: climate scientists, among whom there’s essentially a consensus about the reality of global warming. But because a lot of money is behind the effort to propitiate a contrary view, and because members of the media like Levitt and Dubner are either uninterested in a fair presentation of the facts (because of a desire to be contrarian or, like George Will, out of ideological inflexibility), are beholden to the he said-she said method of reporting, or are simply ignorant, the general media atmosphere around the issue suggests controversy, which leaves the typical layperson in a position of feeling justified in relying on their own naive intuitions (”Driving my Hummer will melt the ice caps? Makes no sense.”) or just throwing up their hands (”I like driving my Hummer, and who knows about this climate change thing, so I’m just going to keep driving my Hummer.”).
And so we may have ecological and civilizational collapse by the end of this century. That sure is going to be Freaky!
October 17th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
5:
Freakonomists: “Yet his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.”
Caldeira: “I believe the correct CO2 emission target is zero. I believe that it is essentially immoral for us to be making devices (automobiles, coal power plants, etc) that use the atmosphere as a sewer for our waste products. I am in favor of outlawing production of such devices as soon as possible.”
October 17th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
7:
That quote doesn’t address the claim Superfreaks makes that Caldeira thinks CO2 is the “wrong villain” in the global warming debate. Not specfically at least. Caldeira may think CO2 is the wrong villain, but also be against burning fossil fuels for other environmental reasons, which is also scientifically sound. Superfreaks may indeed have misrepresented his views on that issue, but the quote you give doesn’t address it unequivocably, even if you think it might.
Re 6:
Just because Freakonomics may be unqualifed and gets many things wrong, doesn’t mean that the climate catastrophists are right. The question of whose views to trust in this debate is very hard to answer. Do we trust Richard Lindzen of MIT, or Hansen of NASA, who have very opposite views on many of these climate issues? Do we trust computer models with no record of accuracy, or the scientifically conservative view that we should confine ourselves to actual observational evidence that can be replicated and confirmed? Should be motivated by imaginative fears or prudent realism?
October 17th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Feyneman spent some time in the first lecture of QED refuting such silliness. I have copied a brief summary below:
“Richard Feynman once used the analogy of a Mayan priest who had mastered the numerical concept of subtraction and other elaborate mathematical rules. He used them to predict the rising and setting of Venus. However, to explain his approach to an audience who did not know what subtraction is, the priest resorted to counting beans. The important thing, said Feynman, is that it makes no difference as far as the result is concerned: We can predict the rise of Venus by counting beans (slow, but easy to understand) or by using the tricky rules (which are much faster, but it takes years of training to learn them)”http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050617-1.htm
The point is, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at satellite photos over the last 15 years and see the steady shrinking of the ice caps, nor to understand what the disappearance of the ice caps will mean relative to increased heat absorption.
And. of course, after all that stupid pontificating, it turns out Caldeira IS a climate scientist.
Unbelievable.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Conradg, how about the one who bothers to have his views researched and peer reviewed? Or the one who hasn’t made a series of statement (not developed through research) that have been tested/refuted by others doing research in this area. Until Lindzen bothers to be a part of the the scientific dialouge about the issue instead of a media whore more willing to pontificate rather then doing actual research that holds up well, he really isn’t what I would call a trust worthy source on this issue. That said, the mostly unreality or tangental work he has done has been fairly decent when he bothers to put in the effort.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Correction that should have been unrelated not unreality near the end.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Caldeira: “I believe the correct CO2 emission target is zero. I believe that it is essentially immoral for us to be making devices (automobiles, coal power plants, etc) that use the atmosphere as a sewer for our waste products. I am in favor of outlawing production of such devices as soon as possible.”
If this quote is accurate, Caldeira is a fool. His proposal would wreck the global economy, plunging billions into abject poverty.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Azherie139
Nice ad hominem. Lindzen has published a great many papers on climate, you should check them out. As for media whores, is he really worse than Hansen, who gets far more ink written about him and seeks out every drop of publicity he can?
I think the real issue is the prudent evaluation of evidence itself, and making predictions that come true. Hansen’s predictions about global warming simply haven’t come true. There’s a serious divergence between his computer models and the actual warming trend. To his credit, Hansen admits this, yet claims that some “unknown factor” is temporarily limiting warming, and that one day it will reverse or be overcome and warming will resume as he had predicted. Of course, that’s not real science, that’s just making guesses to cover one’s ass. The actual global warming trends we’ve seen are simply not alarming, and are not following the patterns of the alarmist models, which is why many of them have had to reduce their predictions to conform to the evidence. The actual warming trends we’ve seen are far more in line with Lindzen’s views than with Hansen’s.
Re 9. Tim:
“The point is, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at satellite photos over the last 15 years and see the steady shrinking of the ice caps, nor to understand what the disappearance of the ice caps will mean relative to increased heat absorption.”
Funny you mention this, since the ice caps are not shrinking. The Antartic Ice Cap is actually net growing, as is antarctic sea ice. You may be confusing the polar sea ice with an “ice cap”, which it is not. And as it happens, even polar sea ice, which was decreasing for a few years there, has been regrowing the last two years, and seems headed back into normal patterns. You may be thinking about shrinking glaciers, which is a different story entirely than ice caps.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Lindzen has a recent article in Geophysical Research Letters “On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data” which shows that the climate sensitivity used in most climate models is not supported by the actual climate data, but points to a much lower sensitivity in a different area than they depend upon.
Here’s the article for purchase:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039628.shtml
Here’s a summary from a skeptic’s website:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/new-paper-from-lindzen/#more-9519
October 17th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
1. Lindzen has the credentials to speak on the climate change issue, but he is vastly outnumbered by other climate scientists who disagree with his viewpoint.
2. All the global warming “skeptics” among the scientific community, Lindzen included, rely on negative feedback effects. If we reject climate modeling as too complex from the standpoint of conservative science, then we must also be skeptical that negative feedback effects will forever save us from the elementary physics. And the elementary physics tells us that increasing greenhouse gas emissions will increase temperature on Earth.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Realist:
1. Lindzen and other scientific skeptics are outnumbered, but not “vastly”. It also depends on what specifics we are talking about as well. Even Lindzen agrees that warming is occurring, and that CO2 is a factor, only that most of the warming is natural, and that CO2’s effects are modest and of limited potential. Likewise, those making extreme, alarmist, catastrophic predictions are in the minority as well.
2. You have it backwards. It is climate alarmists who rely on large positive climate feedback. Lindzen and other skeptics do not at all rely on any negative feedback, although they admit negative feedbacks are likely a factor. On the other hand, ALL of the models that predict alarming rates of global warming rely on high degrees of positive feedback, without which there would simply be no more than from 0.5C (per Lindzen) to 1.5C (per Hansen) of warming for a doubling of CO2 to 560 ppm. The article I cited by Lindzen points out that these high levels of positive feedback (sensitivity) are simply not reflected by the actual data, which in part explains why the models which use those high sensitivity figures aren’t able to make predictions about climate that match the data.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
“I’m a little confused. What are Ken Caldeira’s actual views on the role of CO2 in climate change? I’m not yet sure that his views on CO2 are actually being misrepresented by Freakonomics. Anyone familiar with his real views?”
His real view is that his views are being misrepresented by Freakonomics (super). This ain’t rocket science.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
If this quote is accurate, Caldeira is a fool.
I agree that his actual views are extreme and go further than I would. Which makes it all the stranger that Levitt & Dubner chose to misrepresent him as an opponent of CO2 emissions limits.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Conradg -
Well this is exactly what I mean. Until the end of time it will be possible to find scientists and plausible experts who deny global warming, if for no other reason than there’s a buck to be made and fame to be got from contrarianism. And indeed climate science is a complicated matter – it’s possible the models are missing some negative feedback that will in fact lead to massive cooling in the next 100 years. And it’s also possible that we’re all brains in vats, given the illusion of reality by a Cartesian demon in a labcoat in some other dimension.
But nonetheless there’s a scientific consensus on the issue of global warming, or as much of one as you can find on any issue. Those who say that global warming is a serious problem that urgently needs to be addressed are the authorities to trust. And the cost of not doing so, or of waiting until their computer models are perfect (which will of course never be the case, so there will always be grounds for skepticism for those who really want to doubt), is, again, ecological and possibly civilizational collapse within 100 years.
As for your specific points about ice caps and so forth – they’ve been debunked all over the place, but there’s no point in linking to those debunkings because you could just respond to linking to further denialist claims. And I can’t stop you, nor a huge chunk of the population, from giving credence to those views, even though it’s obvious to me that they are not the most reliable authorities on the issue of climate change. Which from my perspective is an enormous problem.
Meanwhile, September 2009 was the second warmest on record. (Guess that means we’ve been in a period of global cooling since 2005!)
October 17th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Reducing pollution and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels which are in ever dwindling supply is virtuous and crucial to the future of the human race, regardless of global warming. When the supply of oil reaches its near limit, the results will be catastrophic – more so even than a world of higher global temperatures. Even global warming skeptics can get on board that argument and that should be the focus of environmentalists.
The debate over Carbon emissions and global warming has become too toxic, dominated by scientifically illiterate people with agendas and axes to grind. Right now, the hot air coming out of the mouths of global warming Cassandras and denialists is the leading cause of greenhouse gasses. This debate is going nowhere and the dialogue needs to change if anything good is going to happen.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
“His real view is that his views are being misrepresented by Freakonomics (super). This ain’t rocket science.”
Yes, I get that. I just want to know what his real views are on CO2, and if he does think CO2 is “the villain”, how did Freakonomics get that so wrong, or use him as an example of someone who runs counter to the mainstream (especially when there are so many others he could have chosen, such as Lindzen).
October 17th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Chachy,
Using the word “deny” to describe alarmist AGW skeptics presumes that alarmist AGW has actually been proven, when it has not. It hasn’t happened yet, and the predictions that it will are based on a lot of dubious assumptions, particularly the one that we know enough about how climate works to make accurate predictions about the future. Using fear of the unknown but potentially dangerous future as a prod to massive changes in our economic and energy systems is similar to Dick Cheney and the neocons using fear to goad us into an invasion of Iraq that has only weakened out country. I say look to the facts.
Even the alarmist models admit that CO2 can only have been responsible for warming since 1970. Yet the earth has been warming since 1850 on its own. Why presume that all warming since 1970 has been unnatural? There are significant warming and cooling trends in climate that are much greater than the recent trend, the causes of which we know little about. You vastly overstate the scientific consensus on CO2, which is that by itself it can warm the earth only slightly, but not catastrophically. There is no consensus about the feedback mechanisms that are necessary for alarming or catastrophic warming to occur. It’s not just a matter of “perfecting” the models, it’s a matter of having any confidence in them at all.
The scientific consensus on global warming is nowhere near “as much of one as you can find on any issue.” The debate over evolution, for example, has a nearly universal scientific consensus up and down the board, dwarfing the very limited and partial consensus about global warming.
As for the spike in temps in September 09, I might remind you that weather is not climate, but in any case, you are cherry picking, as that spike is an anomaly of recent trends, which have been quite cool, and October is looking much cooler than September in any case. The good news is that there have been no new global highs since 1998, which is good for the earth if not some people dedicated to the idea that the sky is falling.
I’m glad you don’t try to debunk the debunking of media myths about the ice caps. The data doesn’t lie.
October 17th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
conradg -
But I’ve already conceded that you probably can’t be convinced; there are plenty of apparently authoritative voices to turn to if you want to affirm the belief that those who warn of catastrophic global warming are alarmists. And you won’t convince me – I would just point to things like this, which is from an authority I trust, that seems to counter the claim that the Antarctic ice cap is growing; or this graph that hardly suggests that Arctic sea ice is heading back to normal patterns. (As for the September 2009 data point – it was indeed cherry-picked, but for rhetorical purposes – to suggest that while we dither in such debates global warming continues apace (which of course is how I, but not you, see it!).
But at the end of the day neither of us (I presume) are climate scientists, and we just have to be smart about who to trust. And hope that those who have a stake in not taking drastic action to avert climate change (i.e., most of those who are doing quite well under the business-as-usual paradigm (i.e., most of those with a lot of money, and hence capacity to promote their views)) are not leading us astray.
October 17th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
1. I accept that there are two extremes on the scientific climate change issue, but Lindzen is on one of those extremes, and something like the IPCC report is in the middle (and often criticized as insufficiently strong by more alarmist members of the scientific community). As an outside observer, it does not seem sensible to take the word of the extremist over that of the mainstream, especially given the political incentives for holding such views.
2. It’s just not true that Lindzen doesn’t rely on negative feedback. Just google “Lindzen negative feedback”–he uses it quite often as a reason not to be concerned about climate change. It is also the case that most climate scientists believe that positive feedback will outweigh negative feedback, but one doesn’t need to accept even that to be alarmed about climate change (a 1.5 C increase is a lot, and concentration of carbon dioxide equivalents is projected to get a lot higher than 560 ppm). Besides, even if we don’t know whether positive or negative feedback will win out, basic risk aversion would suggest weighing worse scenarios heavier than less damaging scenarios.
October 17th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Chachy,
First of all, I can be convinced – by evidence. I started off following the CO2 global warming debate since the early 1970’s, and assumed it was valid. As the years went by, however, the lack of convincing evidence turned me into a skeptic. So I certainly can be convinced to change my mind, since I’ve already done that once before. It just takes evidence.
Can the same be said of you? At what point would you abandon the AGW alarmist hypothesis?
Regarding your “evidence”, your link to RealClimate depicts a genuine warming of the Antartic peninsula. However, the vast bulk of the ice in Antartica is on the mainland, and that has actually been increasing, more than off-setting the loss of ice on the Peninsula. This is due in part, perhaps, to one of the “negative feedbacks” of a warmed ocean. Warmer oceans means more evaporation which means moister air which means more precipitation, which, when it lands on Antarctica, increases the Antarctic ice.
Regarding the northern polar ice, you will notice that all of the loss occurred after the 1998 major El Nino event, which warmed the ocean waters considerably. This led to a dramatic loss of arctic ice since. However, ocean surface temps have since returned to normal, and the artic ice has been rebounding as a consequence over the last two years. We will of course have to monitor this situation, but this rebound in ice could well return to a normal condition soon.
You should also notice that southern antarctic ice has been unaffected by these conditions, and has actually increased over the last thirty years.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png
The two hemispheres are not in synch, but global warming should be affecting both the same, since CO2 levels are the same universally. Most likely the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) is at work.
I do agree that as non-scientists we have to be careful who we trust, but this works on your side of the street also. For example, were you aware that RealClimate.org was begun and is funded by an environmentalist lobby? I’m not saying that means their work is without value, but it’s an advocacy group, not an objective scientific enterprise.
As politics goes, I’m a liberal leftist, I just think it’s important to get things right. We can’t be like the neocons, using fear and exagerated arguments to push our agenda. In the end, that will only help destroy progressivism. We have to realize that we all have a stake in not taking ill-advised aggressive action when the case is far from a “slam dunk”. It will come back to bite us someday, possibly sooner than we think.
October 17th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
[...] Steven Dubner Digs the Hole Deeper - Matthew Yglesias [...]
October 17th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Realist,
1.I wouldn’t characterize Lindzen as an extremist, he’s just very conservative about examining the actual evidence and not drawing conclusion that aren’t supported by the evidence. There certainly are extremists in the skeptic’s camp, those who deny there’s any warming, or who think it’s all a conspiracy to control the world, or who for religious reasons think that God wants us to rape the earth, etc. Lindzen is none of those. It’s tempting to try to split the differences between the extremists in both camps, but that is not how science works. We don’t split the difference between evolutionists and creationists. One is right, and the other is wrong. We decide on the basis of the evidence where “right” is, not by political moderation. That’s one of the problems with the IPCC in fact. If the evidence proves the alarmists, right, I’m on board all the way. But the actual evidence keeps undermining their case, which is why the IPCC keeps shifting backwards to the consternation of the alarmists. If one merely looks at the evidence, one can’t call Lindzen an extremist, since his views are well-founded in the evidence. Extremists are those who tend to twist or ignore the evidence in favor of exaggerated projections.
2.Lindzen uses negative feedback in his analysis, simply because the evidence indicates that negative feedbacks exist. As do positive feedbacks. The question is how do they balance out. His studies of the evidence suggest that the positive feedbacks are mitigated by the negatives, perhaps entirely, perhaps more than that (such that the expected positive effects of CO2 are not entirely experienced. However, this is an entirely different issue from whether presuming a net negative feedback is required to come to the conclusion that the effects of CO2 are relatively minor. As I stated, even Hansen agrees with this. If one eliminates all question of feedbacks, even Hansen says that a doubling of CO2 should result in no more than a 1.5C increase in temperature – half of which we have already experienced. Lindzen favors a smaller number, but he concedes that it’s possible Hansen is right on this point. But even if he is, a 1.5C increase – meaning an additional 0.5-1.0C increase (giving some leeway on both sides) is not cause for alarm and will not result in catastrophe. That is Lindzen’s position “without feedbacks”, and thus he does not rely on negative feedbacks to counter the alarmist predictions. It is the alarmists who rely on positive feedbacks to make alarming predictions.
3. As for a 1.5C increase being “alot”, that depends on what “alot” means. Historically, during the holocene, we’ve gone through much higher world temperatures. It would mean a return to the Medieval warm period, or perhaps the Egyptian Warm Period, but nothing more than that. It’s very much a manageable situation, particularly in that it will take 50-100 years for that warming to manifest, during which time I expect the world to get off most fossil fuels almost entirely anyway.
Risk aversion requires that we also weigh the costs of mitigation. For the expected increase, the cost of most proposed mitigation is unnecessarily high. We cannot be like Dick Cheney arguing that we have to treat a 1% chance of WMDs as a 100% certainty, and invade Iraq under that rationale. A modest “containment” policy is the better approach. Which means an aggressive campaign to develop better energy technologies, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, particularly oil, which is a poison for the world politic as it is, general conservation and so forth, but not stopping or slowing economic growth, since long-term that is the engine which will actually make possible a conversion to cleaner energy technologies. Cap’n Trade is a bad idea all around.
October 17th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Caldeira has exactly one quote on his home page: “Carbon dioxide is the right villain,” says Caldeira, “insofar as inanimate objects can be villains.”
Compare with Levitt and Dubner:
“Yet [Ken Caldeira]’s research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.”
October 17th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias (”journalistic malpractice” up to and including “Correctly ascertaining the color of widely available macroscopic objects is not much to ask from authors”): Journalistic Malpractice from Leavitt and Dubner Steven Dubner Digs The Hole Deeper [...]
October 17th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
conradq = concern troll on Big Oil’s payroll. They’re so easy to spot.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:13 am
1. Among the scientific community, Lindzen is an extremist. I work in a peripheral field and I know a lot of climatologists; it’s not easy to find scientists who advocate less concern over climate change than does Lindzen. I don’t care about the non-scientists. Accepting mainstream rather than extremist views in science is just sound judgment. It’s not how science works, but we aren’t doing science; we’re debating policy. And the way to do policy educated by science is to take the mainstream scientific view, because the mainstream is more likely to be correct than the extremists. I don’t care to debate the data with you because I’m not a climatologist, but I trust the consensus view of researchers in the field above random blog commentators.
2. All cost-benefit analysis require considering the cost of mitigation. My point is that the less we know about feedback effects, the less we are able to discount the most extreme scenarios, and therefore the more we should work to decrease emissions. If mainstream science is really as bad at predicting the effect of altering our atmosphere as you claim, then we’d better stop altering it right now because we have no idea what could happen.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:57 am
A book is not a scientific paper refuting global warming. If you can’t write a scientific paper refuting global warming, have it peer-reviewed and published, you will not begin to sway me. Global warming is a SCIENTIFIC THEORY, being “refuted” with just a bunch of “theories”, that are no better than economic “theory”.
Did these geniuses see the financial meltdown coming? Did they warn everybody?
October 18th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Paul Krugman writes about how a number of economists argued for a higher discount rate than the zero rate used by Nick Stern. He expained:
I think that the higher-discount-rate argument is what you call assuming a screw.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:01 am
“conradq = concern troll on Big Oil’s payroll. They’re so easy to spot.”
Yes, I’m just oozing with Big Oil money. Of course, if I want the really big money, I should sell phony carbon offsets like Al Gore.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:16 am
Realist,
1. You’re using “extremist” in a non-sensical manner. Science isn’t measured by “concern”, but by evidence and theories which match the evidence. Lindzen’s theories are not outside the range of the scientific evidence.
2. “My point is that the less we know about feedback effects, the less we are able to discount the most extreme scenarios, and therefore the more we should work to decrease emissions.”
Sorry, this makes no sense at all. The less we know about feedback effects, the less reason we have to take them seriously. The default position on unknown risks is not to take them seriously, but to study them until they become known. There are millions of things we don’t know about that might one day become dangerous. We can’t spend our lives taking them all seriously and investing trillions of dollars in trying to mitigate them.
To give just one example, supposing the real climate threat we are facing isn’t global warming, but another ice-age. That is a very real threat, in that interglacial periods such as ours last only about 10,000 years, and we are due for another ice age pretty soon. Global temperatures rose dramatically at the end of the last ice age, but they have gradually been creeping downwards ever since, which is the pattern of failure that leads to the common precipitous collapse that initiates ice ages. Present temperatures are actually among the lowest we’ve experienced in the last ten thousand years. Given those facts, isn’t there a serious risk that mitigating CO2 might actually send us into another Ice Age, in that elevated CO2 with its mild greenhouse effects could be helping prevent us from falling back into another ice age? Granted, the risk is rather small, but if you are right about taking extreme risks more seriously, it’s a very serious risk, probably far more serious in its consequences than a temperature rise of a few degrees, and therefore we shouldn’t act in a way which might exacerbate that threat. Which means, like much of life, you can’t protect against all risks without subjecting yourself to another kind of risk. Can you really be certain that mitigating global warming wouldn’t lead to something even worse – an ice age?
(I’m being slightly facetious here, but the point isn’t entirely absurd).
October 18th, 2009 at 2:18 am
“Weitzman pointed out, however, that we are highly uncertain about the impact of greenhouse gas emissions — and that the form of this uncertainty is such that there’s a significant risk of utter catastrophe if we don’t act.”
Does this remind anyone of Bush, Cheney, and Rice’s arguments for invading Iraq?
October 18th, 2009 at 2:32 am
Wiley,
Anthropogenic global warming is not a scientific theory, it’s a scientific hypothesis. A theory is actually able to make predictions that are confirmed by observational evidence, which AGW is not yet able to do. To the contrary, it’s predictions have failed time and time again. Climate scientists are certainly trying to turn it into a valid theory, but it’s simply not there yet. So the burden of proof is still on AGW advocates to make their case, not for skeptics to “disprove” it.
What skeptics have been relatively successful at is pointing out the faults in the evidence and logic used to try to support the AGW hypothesis, especially the climate models that are used to make predictions. When AGW advocates refer to such matters as “consensus”, they are merely referring to the belief many scientists have that the AGW hypothesis will one day be shown to be a proven theory, that the evidence will emerge to support it, not that the evidence presently raises it to the level of an actual scientific theory. The standards for a scientific theory are relatively high, in other words. It’s not a weasly word as is often thought by laymen.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:44 am
1. OK, I could have used a better word than “concern.” I want to include not only expected temperature change but overall effect on climate. Lindzen is definitely an extremist in that his estimation on the magnitude and impact of anthropogenic climate change are less than the vast majority of climatologists. From the outsider’s perspective, it simply does not make sense to trust his views over his more mainstream colleagues.
2. There may be millions of things that could become dangerous, but it’s not like we have no guidelines at all. It’s the difference between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” We know that we don’t know enough to make precise predictions about what effects will happen when we pump vast amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere. And a 2 degree expected increase with moderate variance is better than a 2 degree expected increase with high variance. It’s not a good idea to mess with something that is so vital to our well-being as a species (and as life in general) until we get a good understanding of how it works.
October 18th, 2009 at 6:35 am
“Anthropogenic global warming is not a scientific theory, it’s a scientific hypothesis. A theory is actually able to make predictions that are confirmed by observational evidence, which AGW is not yet able to do.”
Good grief. The climate models of James Hansen made successful predictions two decades ago. His model that included volcanic eruptions (i.e. the one that climate change deniers don’t refer to, because it’s the one that applies to the reality that actually happened since 1988, when the models were published) produced a very good fit to the actual data collected up to 2006.
Climate change is not a hypothesis. It’s an observation.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:42 am
In assessing the views of Prof. Lindzen on the subject of climate change, a little perspective is in order. Consider the case of one Prof. Peter Duesberg of the Un. of California Medical School. Back in the 1960s, Duesberg was a pioneer researcher in the area of retroviruses to the extent that he was highly considered for a Nobel Prize in medicine by the Swedish Academy. In the early 1980s, when the occurrence of AIDS came onto the radar screens of the medical community and it was hypothesized that it was caused by the HIV retrovirus, Duesberg was appropriately skeptical of the connection. Unfortunately, as time passed, the evidence of the connection piled up and Duesberg turned from a respectable skeptic into a denier. This denial continues to this day and has become more extreme and has resulted in the good professor becoming something of a pariah in the medical research community. Today, he is considered a nutcase by his peers in that community and has obtained the same level of disdain there as the young earth creationists have in the biological community.
Prof. Lindzen has, like the example of Duesberg in the early 1980s, been a valuable skeptic of anthropogenic climate change who has kept the mainstream climate scientists on their toes and has caused them to refine their climate models to take advantage of the great increase in computer power which has occurred since climate models were first developed. However, given the history of Duesberg, we must consider whether Lindzen is turning from a skeptic into a denier. The symptoms of such a metamorphosis are beginning to become visible in some of Lindzens’ recent writings.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Re:negative feedbacks
If you’re talking specifically about the ‘negative feedback’ that plants could photosynthesize more and sequester more CO2, then I do know a little bit about that, though I don’t work on it directly. (I did look at _instantaneous_ responses to high CO2 this year, which is a very different thing, but haven’t ever _grown_ plants at high CO2, though I would like to maybe this coming year).
Most plants do photosynthesize more under elevated CO2, but four points are worth bearing in mind:
1) The increase is not usually very large, nowhere near enough to scrub the extra CO2 out of the atmosphere. In some of the studies with forest trees I’ve heard about, they saw about a 20% increase in photosynthesis, well below what they expected to see. Last month at a conference I got to talk with one of the world experts in this area (plant response to elevated CO2) and he suggested this is a pretty typical range for responses. A 20% increase in photosynthesis is not a h*ll of a lot.
2) The response is constrained by nutrient limitations- nitrogen, phosphorus, sometimes iron. Many plants are not, in the long term, carbon-limited, and they won’t be able to use extra CO2 unless their nutrient limitations are overcome. Which is why you get people with ideas like seeding the ocean with iron filings and the like.
3) The response can be totally cancelled out by elevated temperatures, which will suppress photosynthesis in a lot of plants: too many studies till now have looked at CO2 alone instead of combined CO2/temperature effects (though this can be justified too)
4) The response often tends to decrease over time as plants “acclimate” to higher CO2 and alter their metabolic processes to be less carbon efficient.
Lastly, positive feedbacks are a definite possibility too. If the rain forests and boreal forest start dying because of drier or warmer conditions, then they won’t be sequestering as much carbon any more, and if warm temperatures cause the melting of frozen wetlands and the breakdown of coral reefs, then that could actually lead to more stored carbon being released to the atmosphere.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:41 am
SLC, there’s a similar story about a prominent 20th scientist who started out as a skeptic of the idea of continental drift. Eventually, of course, the theory was generally accepted, but the scientists never came a long. His views simply became increasingly extreme and isolated, up until the day he died. I think it’s not all that uncommon a story, and Richard Lindzen fits the mold. As far as I know, he’s virtually the only somewhat prominent denier left.
Actually, I’d be obliged if someone could remind me of the name of the continental drift guy. It’s complete escaping me right now.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Re Another Adam
A Google search turns up the name of one Chester R. Longwell, who I have never heard of. However, in Mr. Longwells’ paper, there is a reference to George Gaylord Simpson as something of a continental drift skeptic. Simpson, of course, was a well known researcher in evolutionary biology and, along with Mayr and Dobzansky is credited with the development of the evolutionary synthesis of paleontology and genetics.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Re: Dobzansky
Minor correction- that would be “Dobzhansky”
October 18th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Thanks. Unfortunately, I’m still not able to dig up the original article, which is a shame — it was good.
I’m not sure if anyone else noticed that congradg kind of gave up the game up above with his crack about Al Gore’s wealth. It’s just more culture war bullshit. I’m not sure why people are wasting their time arguing over this.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:40 am
[...] respectability to the most childish of pursuits. So I was glad to see their new book get torched by Matt Yglesias, and [...]
October 18th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Increase in Antarctic ice isn’t a “negative feedback.” If the best climate models are even close to right, it’s simply an an effect of global warming. It does nothing whatsoever to reduce warming.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Realist,
1.I don’t mind your saying that Lindzen is to one side of the spectrum among climatologists, but I still object to using the word “extremist” to describe him. It simply doesn’t apply. Simply because he goes against the current mainstream doesn’t mean his views are extreme. They may turn out to be incorrect, but they are well within the evidentiary boundaries of the current science. He also has a great many fellow climatologists and scientists who generally agree with his conservative views on climate change. It’s not nearly as lop-sided a situation as you and others here are making it out to be. But I can certainly understand that from an outsider’s perspective, the perception being created in the media is that anyone who “denies” catastrophic climate predictions is now considered an “extremist”. It’s pretty much the same as the situation in early 2003, when anyone who denied that Iraq had WMDs and was ready to launch nukes within 45 minutes was considered an “extremist”. Now we find out that those “extremists” were right all along.
2. I generally agree that it’s not a good idea to mess with Mother Nature. I’d be more than happy if we got rid entirely of the oil and coal industry and developed far less damaging methods for generating energy. I’m also very optimistic that we will do so over the next century. With or without climate change alarmism, I think fossil fuels are largely on their way out, and I’m happy about that. There’s plenty of good reasons other than climate change to phase out these dirty energy methods. (So much for that big paycheck I’m getting from Big Oil). But likewise, there’s no need that I can see for a sudden and over-accelerated shift that would damage world economies. The proper kind of risk mitigation that I can get behind is spending a fuck of a lot of money on alternative energy research and conservation, finding ways to make alternative energy economically viable. The wrong way to go about this would be to put artificial caps on CO2 emissions.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
“Good grief. The climate models of James Hansen made successful predictions two decades ago. His model that included volcanic eruptions (i.e. the one that climate change deniers don’t refer to, because it’s the one that applies to the reality that actually happened since 1988, when the models were published) produced a very good fit to the actual data collected up to 2006.”
This is simply wrong. James Hansen’s 1988 climate models simply have NOT accurately predicted warming since that time. I don’t have the charts of that model’s future predictions, but I’ve seen them compared to actual data since then, and there is a huge and growing gap. That’s why Hansen himself has had to continually re-adjust his model to try to match the actual data. This is called retro-fitting. Other models have had the same problems. Hansen himself admits to this, but always comes up with an excuse of one kind or another to explain the discrepency, claiming that the warming will one day appear as he has predicted.
Just as importantly, Hansen’s climate models (and almost all alarmist climate models) predict a particular pattern of warming that is a kind of unique “signature” for greenhouse gas warming which can distinguish it from other kinds of natural warming. In the graphs, it comes out as a kind of “hot spot” in the layers of the atmosphere that is easily discernable. This “hot spot” simply has not arisen in the actual data, and it remains one of the most serious problems with these models. It’s another prediction that these alarmist greenhouse gas-based models of warming depend upon but has not come to pass. In fact, on the issue of changing my mind about AGW, if this pattern of warming were to be found in the data, I would very seriously begin to believe in the AGW hypothesis. In the absense of this kind of confirmation, the hypothesis remains a mere hypothesis, not a genuine theory.
“Climate change is not a hypothesis. It’s an observation.”
Technically correct, in that warming has certainly occurred. But the hypothesis at hand is the one which claims that man-made increases in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is the cause of the current warming, and further, that it will result in alarming increases in world temperatures which will require us to mitigate those emissions. This remains an hypothesis, not a genuine theory with a proven record of making accurate predictions that show up in the data.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
SLC and Another Adam,
You’re certainly right that there have been scientists who had resisted new theories and stubbornly held onto them in the face of overwhelming evidence. But comparing such past figures to Lindzen is presuming the existence of overwhelming evidence for the alarmist greenhouse gas hypothesis, which simply isn’t the case. There are many counter examples of new scientific theories that got popular, and then had to be abandoned as the evidence came in against them. Discerning where Lindzen will end up before the evidence is actually definitive is a fool’s game. I think you need to admit that he could turn out to be right, just as I have to admit he could turn out to be wrong, in which case the story gets written differently.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
“Increase in Antarctic ice isn’t a “negative feedback.” If the best climate models are even close to right, it’s simply an an effect of global warming. It does nothing whatsoever to reduce warming.”
We were discussing the issue of melting ice caps, and I pointed out that in that regards, warming creates a negative feedback which can actually increase antarctic ice, offsetting the melting occurring on the antartic peninsula. This is not a negative temperature feedback, of course, as you point out, but that wasn’t my claim in the first place.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
“I’m not sure if anyone else noticed that congradg kind of gave up the game up above with his crack about Al Gore’s wealth. It’s just more culture war bullshit. I’m not sure why people are wasting their time arguing over this.”
Dude, I voted for Al Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004, and I’m a huge Obama supporter. So this is not a cultural war issue. I just think Gore has gone way over the top with his setting up huge business investments in the slimy and dubious field of climate “offsets”, while at the same time mounting a world-wide lobbying effort aimed at convincing governments to adopt policies that would greatly enrich him. It’s a huge conflict of interest that no one on the left would tolerate in George Bush or Dick Cheney (Halliburton, anyone?). I can’t see any reason why it’s tolerated in Al Gore.
And yes, I’ve lost a lot of respect for the guy, going back to the way he campaigned in 2000, the slimy way he fought for the recount (only in those counties in which he thought he might gain votes, not the whole state), and the way he’s distorted the facts in the global warming debate for propaganda purposes. I’d be more understanding of that if he weren’t positioned to make tons of money off the whole deal. I don’t recall Gandhi or Martin Luther King setting themselves up to profit hugely from their causes. It creates further incentives to demonize opponents and close off any debate in favor of “the science is in” nonsense and “slam dunk” thinking. Can you honestly defend that kind of financial conflict?
October 18th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Hector,
No, I wasn’t referring to any particular negative feedback. There’s all kinds of positive and negative climate feedbacks, I was simply referring to the issue of “net sensitivity” of the climate, whether that is positive or negative and to what degree. The alarmist models rely on a high degree of positive sensitivity, meaning in other words a high preponderance of positive feedbacks. Lindzen points to indications in the data that climate sensitivity is much lower than these models assume, but he doesn’t need specific negative feedback models to demonstrate this, he only needs to look at the overall data pattern.
His view is that climate is way too complex to try to break it down into all the millions of pieces and parts to try to calculate the net sensitivity, it’s much easier and more reliable to simply look at the data and analyze it directly for signs of net sensitivity. And in doing so, he is able to demonstrate that net sensitivity is way too low to support the alarmist climate models’ predictions.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Sorry conrad: anyone bringing up Al Gore in scientific discussions is guaranteed to be someone motivated by right-wing politics. Calling the models “alarmist” is another reactionary propaganda technique; pretending that Al Gore is motivated by profit; the list goes on. There are actual scientists around here, and we recognize your politically motivated garbage – right down to the dishonesty about who you voted for. When I see a lot of cut-and-paste recitations of falsified talking points – and numerous posts – I know what I’m dealing with. The stuff about Gore marks you as a lying partisan hack.
There are a lot of constraints on the physics of the models, and it is extremely clear from the climate data that we were too conservative in estimating the pace of human-induced climate change. If you actually cared about the science we could discuss it – but doing so is useless, since like a creationist you’ll just jump from one dishonest hatchet job to another.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Re conradg
Mr. conradg would, perhaps, make a better case if he started citing climate change skeptics in addition to Prof. Lindzen. It is always dangerous to depend on a limited repository of “experts”. He would also improve his arguments by not citing non-scientists like Al Gore as whipping boys, whose views on the science of climate are of little relevance.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
conradg, you’ve spent your entire Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning writing copious amounts on this thread. That’s a weekend you will never get back. No matter what the oil and coal industries are paying you, it’s not worth it. Go outside and look at the leaves with a cup of hot cider in your hands, or, if the weather’s lousy, see Where the Wild Things are.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Conrad G,
Who gives a tinker’s d*mn about Al Gore. Al Gore is a flavor-of-the-month celebrity, not a climate scientist, and his personal lifestyle choices, however annoying you or I may find them, have little relevance to the fact that climate change is happening.
My point in bringing up negative feedbacks was to illustrate that this one negative feedback, at least, about which I do know a little bit, has turned out to be less significant that many people thought.
And Jason L at #56 has an excellent suggestion which all of us, myself expecially, would be well advised to heed.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Marc,
Let me point out the idiocy of claiming that I’m motivated by right-wing politics. First, you don’t know me. Second, I’ve plainly denied it. Third, it’s irrelevent to the argument in any case. Fourth, not liking Al Gore does not make anyone a right-winger. Fifth, science is not about politics. Sixth, if you have a scientific refutation of anything I’ve said, let’s here it. Seventh, you’re just polarizing and politicizing the debate, which is the last resort of those who can’t make real arguments. Eight, I never said Gore was motivated by profit, I said he had a conflict of interest that we would never tolerate in others. Ninth, calling me a lying partisan hack without actually demonstrating that I’m lying about anything, or that I have a partisan bone to pick, is well, an example of lying partisan hackery on your part, not mine. Take the plank out of your own eye before addressing the motes in mine.
You are right, however, in saying that the models face a lot of constraints in the physics, meaning that we don’t actually know the full physics of climate, and can’t make accurate models for that reason. GIGO. So you are right that we can’t rely on the models. Which leaves us where? Exactly what data is it that you believe indicates that we are too conservative in estimating the pace of human-induced warming? I certainly do care about the science. If you are willing to apologize for the personal insults and groundless accusations you’ve made against me, I’d be glad to learn from you – if you really have anything meaningful to say. SO far, however, you’ve shown yourself to be disinterested in even the basic matters of fact in this conversation, and are drawing wild conclusions from the simple fact that I disagree with the global warming hypothesis, and don’t like Al Gore. Ball in your court.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Jason,
I appreciate your deep concern for my spiritual welfare, but I assure you I’ve had a very loving and full weekend spent working on the lawn and building a new chicken coop. I write very fast, and don’t worry much about the climate, which gives me lots of free time and energy. Plus, those giant paychecks from the oil and gas industry have allowed me to live the life of Reilly out here on my ten acres in the Redwoods, so I have lots of time now and again to pass trolling for fools who still believe in the myths of sinful humanity. Good luck with that.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Hector, I appreciate your attempt to address the issues of negative feedbacks, but the example you provided isn’t one that I’ve ever noticed skeptics taking seriously to begin with. I certainly never have. Trying to find and study all possible feedbacks is an immensely complex task that probably can’t be fully done in our lifetime. It’s more productive to study the actual data and see what the net results of the feedbacks are, rather than try to isolate each one individually, especially since none of them exist in isolation, but in a vast chaotic system of interdependence. So far, the indications seem to be that the net sensitivity is quite small. That could certainly change, but speculations about “tipping points” is just that – speculation.
As for Gore, I mentioned him only in response to accusations that I’m on the paychecks of the oil and gas industry. I can’t believe people here would stoop that low, but if they are concerned about financial entanglements, it’s strange that they don’t find Gore’s own huge business involvements in selling carbon offsets to be a slimy conflict of interest. I mentioned nothing about his lifestyle.
What I find even more disturbing is the level of personal animosity and ad hominem directed at me by so-called “progressives” here. There’s not as much difference between the extremists on left and right as one might think.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
SLC,
We could certainly expand the discussion to include many other scientific climate skeptics other than Lindzen. I just used Lindzen and Hansen because they’re probably the two most famous examples on either side of the debate. It was part of the “who do we trust” issue. I think it was a mistake, in that it tends to personalize the debate, and brought out a lot of baseless attacks on Lindzen, including your own.
The better question, I think, is what methods of scientific inquiry can we trust. Personally, I tend not to trust those who rely on computer climate models to make their case, since the state of the art is just not up to snuff. There’s too much room for tweaking the models to get the “right” result. And as mentioned, they’ve not yet passed the predictive test. I used Lindzen as an example in part because I trust his basic methodology, which is to try to stick to the actual data, and not go far afield with speculative modeling. The modellers get all the headlines, but their methods are very much suspect, and not just by skeptics and extremists. Many climate experts, even those who favor the AGW hypothess, are wary of the modellers. In that respect, I would trust Lindzen’s methods over Hansen’s.
Another example would be Michael Mann’s hockey stick, which upon examination has been debunked, again, by looking at the shoody methods used to construct it. Even recently there’s been further revelations, as his original data has finally been released, against Mann’s own will, showing that it relies heavily on a very small sampling of trees that skews the results. Without personalizing the issue, these kinds of methods are simply not trustworthy science.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
As for Gore, . . . it’s strange that they don’t find Gore’s own huge business involvements in selling carbon offsets to be a slimy conflict of interest. I mentioned nothing about his lifestyle
Hee, hee, too bad, Conrad. You jumped the shark when nothing else in your concern troll schtick was working and you decided to slander Al Gore while claiming to have voted for Democrats.
Really, even if you were telling the truth, that “I used to be a Democrat but . . .” cliche is older than most of the people reading this forum. It started appearing regularly on radio call-in shows and “man-in-the-street” interviews back in the 80s.
“You know, I used to be a Democrat but this guy Reagan . . .”
“I used to vote Democrat, but they’re just too radical . . .”
“I’ve always voted for Democrats before, but they’re all crooks and phonies nowadays . . .”
I don’t know which right-wing hustler first came up with this grandmother of all Concern Troll cliches, but there must be enough of them on old radio and TV station tapes to double the size of the current Republican party.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Turns out virtually nothing Matthew writes in this post is correct:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/global-warming-in-superfreakonomics-the-anatomy-of-a-smear/
It is a smear by paid hack non-climate-scientist Joe Romm. Not surprisingly, of course.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Oh thank God Al came here to helpfully point out who is and isn’t a hack.
How do Dunber and Levitt sleep at night? I guess comfortably, on a big pile of money…
October 19th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Midland,
When did I say I used to be a Democrat? I am a Democrat, always have been, always will be. I voted for Mondale, Clinton, Gore, Bush, Kerry, and Obama. If anything, I’m more liberal than Obama. I don’t agree with everything Democrats say or do, such as this issue of global warming, but that doesn’t make me a Republican. Democrats don’t walk in lockstep as you might wish. Like Will Rogers said, we belong to no organized political party.
If I have a political concern on this issue it’s that environmental progressives are going to end up with egg on their faces like the neocons have after Iraq – discredited and disabused. Which I would not like to see happen. On the other hand, some people here could use a little reality slapped in their faces, so maybe it will be a good thing.
Also, slander requires that what I said be untrue. You haven’t even denied it, so I guess it’s just insulting rather than slanderous.
October 19th, 2009 at 5:08 am
conradg isn’t even making it through these old chestnuts. I want some cutting-edge material from someone that can either name ten climate modelers or explain how one model works and what its theoretical limitations are. Y’know, something more fun?
Come to think of it, I seem to recall you doing the same dance on scienceblogs and maybe in Ezra Klein or George Will’s comments (It’s early and I am too lazy to check, so maybe I’m remembering incorrectly). You sure get around with that whole “I’ve been following this from my basement since the 70s, and Al Gore has been repudiated by all sorts of scientists I don’t name” routine. Hey, you should bring it over to Tim Lambert’s blog sometime and team up with Dash Riprock III.
October 19th, 2009 at 6:01 am
[...] Well, the internet being what it is, the chapter in question has been posted online. I won’t link directly to the pdf, but Matthew Yglesias, no fan of strict IP controls, has no such qualms. [...]
October 19th, 2009 at 11:09 am
So . . . Conrad claims he doesn’t follow the traditional conservative party line that all liberals are closet sociopaths who are secretly in it for the money, but he makes an exception for Al Gore, who apparently did something unspeakable in the 2000 election–what, exactly?–and is a secret sociopath with respect to climate change, a cause he’s studied and sacrificed for most of his adult life?
October 19th, 2009 at 11:24 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias [...]
October 19th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Leavitt and Dubner showed Caldeira two drafts of the chapter prior to publication. He had no objections. Who is at fault?
October 19th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
m and Midland,
What’s this obsession with me, rather than with the issues? As a matter of fact, I’ve commented over at Scienceblogs, but I don’t think ever on the subject of global warming. Mostly in debates on religion at Evolutionblog. I don’t generally read George Will, but I have left, if I recall, exactly one post over there once. I’ve also commented at Daily Kos in a couple of threads on global warming. This means what, exactly?
As for Gore, where exactly did I call him a sociopath? Where did I even imply such a thing? Is it really a matter of dispute that Gore has a big financial stake in the whole carbon offsets industry, while at the same time lobbying for public Policies which would enrich him? Is criticizing Gore some kind of anathema? And what sacrifices, exactly, has Al Gore made for climate change in his life? It’s hard to see how making a ton of money off the enterprise counts as a sacrifice.
Now, as for climate modelers and the science behind it, do you really want to get deeply into that here? Or, at all? You’re not exactly showing the signs of people who want a genuine debate. In fact, there’s a number of climate science skeptics who have challenged the leaders of the AGW theorists to a debate on the issues, and they’ve run away like little girls. Recently one of those guys challenged Lord Mockton (sp?) to a debate, but when Mockton accepted, he backed out.
Again, why this constant imputation that I and other skeptics are arguing in bad faith? It really is as if we’ve violated some kind of religious faith, rather than merely challenged a scientific hypothesis. I would think most people would consider even the possiblity that our climate threats are over-exagerated. Yet you guys are reacting the way Dick Cheney reacted to anyone who suggested that maybe Iraq didn’t really have any serious WMDs for us to worry about. There’s a constant charge that we hate America/the earth, and lack patriotism/concern for the world, and are arguing in bad faith, because we have some hidden agenda. It’s a scientific argument, guys, not a political one. I criticize Gore for his weak science, and his conflicts of interest, not his politics. If I thought the science behind AGW were genuine, I’d agree fully with his political solution. Check that, I’d be even more aggressive about it. Like I’ve said before, I could be wrong, but you guys seem unable to even make that admission, and make an honest effort to discuss the actual science. You can criticize me all you like, but you don’t offer any arguments of your own at all, not even warmed over PR from RealClimate, just ad hominem attacks on critics. Where’s the evidence that you’re even capable of arguing in a remotely respectful fashion?
Btw, here’s an interesting viewpoint on climate models from an atmospheric physicist.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/10/climate-modelling-nonsense
October 20th, 2009 at 3:45 am
Obession with you? I don’t have an obsession with you. I just remember reading approximately the same routine from you elsewhere. How do I know it’s you and not the dozens of other people without knowledge of CFD that pop up? Because you used the moniker ‘conradg.’ Could it be that there is someone who happens to have posted roughly the same nonsense elsewhere as you using the same pseudonym? Sure, and if you happen to have a clone then so be it. I see a lot of people like you on the Internet, and unfortunately I am burdened with those memories. I’m sure it bothers me a lot more than it does you.
Is criticizing Gore some kind of anathema?
Criticizing Al Gore is pointless. He isn’t a climatologist. He doesn’t have any science background to speak of. People that bring him up do so for political reasons, and because they’re crazy and have a grudge against him. It’s a red herring.
Now, as for climate modelers and the science behind it, do you really want to get deeply into that here?
Do I want to ‘go into that deeply here?’ Not particularly, because I don’t have any reason to believe that you know anything.* If you were the fellow that once went on to conflate the sensitivity of ensemble forecasting with the resolution of climate models, or the person that reversed the significance of the divergence of system trajectories, then I would definitely want to see your CV to verify that you have some background with CFD, and only then I could be enticed to correspond with you via e-mail subject to certain conditions.
You’re not exactly showing the signs of people who want a genuine debate.
The ‘debate’ such as it is doesn’t transpire in blog comments between anonymous people without any references. This is purely recreational.
In fact, there’s a number of climate science skeptics who have challenged the leaders of the AGW theorists to a debate on the issues, and they’ve run away like little girls.
The type of debate you’re referring to is useless for resolving technical subjects, being vulnerable to the Gish Gallop and being judged on rhetoric. Though feel free to detail each and every one of these debate arrangements. While you’re at it, named six climatologists other than Lindzen without looking.
Recently one of those guys challenged Lord Mockton (sp?) to a debate, but when Mockton accepted, he backed out.
The last debate drama that approximates your story that I recall was between Ian Plimer and George Monbiot. If you have anything in particular in mind with Monckton you can feel free to provide detailed information.
Personally my favorite bit of Monckton melodrama was his charade with the APS that embarrassed him so ridiculously.
Again, why this constant imputation that I and other skeptics are arguing in bad faith?
I don’t care what faith you’re arguing in. If any of you had the qualifications to deal with the subject you might be more useful than for concern trolling, and you would publish like most sane people. You aren’t skeptics, you’re chaff. You aren’t taking up the research, you’re writing uninformed diatribes in blog posts.
* As a caveat I promise not to care if you know anything, if the nonsense you generate is novel and not something I’ve read dozens of times already.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
M,
Obession with you? I don’t have an obsession with you.
Yes, the kind of obsession that makes you write long posts like this one that are entirely full of personal, ad hominem attacks on me, and have nothing to do with the actual science of this issue. That makes you try to track down my entire history of blog-commenting, and presume that I am part of some vast conspiracy. That makes you imagine that I am somehow everywhere on the internet. Dude, this is becoming a pathological obsession. If you can’t refute my “chestnuts”, then please, just leave me alone.
I just remember reading approximately the same routine from you elsewhere. How do I know it’s you and not the dozens of other people without knowledge of CFD that pop up? Because you used the moniker ‘conradg.’ Could it be that there is someone who happens to have posted roughly the same nonsense elsewhere as you using the same pseudonym? Sure, and if you happen to have a clone then so be it. I see a lot of people like you on the Internet, and unfortunately I am burdened with those memories. I’m sure it bothers me a lot more than it does you.
Yes, you’re imagining things. Go back on the meds, is my advice. I have hardly ever posted about climate change, except on this blog, and as I said before, two brief threads at Daily Kos. If you find evidence otherwise, please do, but that would just be feeding your obsession with me, wouldn’t it? Your hysterical reaction to this debate – which is to personally attack me without respite – only tells me how weak and insecure some in the AGW community are getting.
Criticizing Al Gore is pointless. He isn’t a climatologist. He doesn’t have any science background to speak of. People that bring him up do so for political reasons, and because they’re crazy and have a grudge against him. It’s a red herring.
First, I only brought him up because I was being attacked by some idiot here who claimed that I was being paid by Big Oil to blog. You yourself have made the same idiotic charge, and have yet to apologize for it. I agree that Al Gore has no business becoming the worldwide mouthpiece for AGW, but that’s what he’s become. He’s won the freaking Nobel Prize Peace Prize for it, for God’s sake. They didn’t give it to Hansen, In fact, you’ll notice that there’s no talk of giving any of the Nobel Science Prizes to Hansen or other leading climatologists in the AGW camp. I think you know the reason why – the science is weak, and doesn’t rise to the level of a genuine tested theory. Further, to pretend that there’s no political movement associated with “climate change” is simply absurd. Even the science has been highly politicized. Al your own comments here have been political, not scientific. And if criticizing Gore is pointless, then so is defending him – especially when that defense involves denying the basic facts. In short, bringing up Gore is not a sign of craziness or political motivation. Giving him a Nobel Peace Prize might be a sign of politically motivated craziness, but considering the role he plays in the politics of this, he’s quite relevant to the political side of the issue, and how it has distorted and exaggerated the science. He even plays a side-roll in this debate about Superfreakonomics, in that Joe Romm, who seems to have decided to try to make a scandal out of this story, is an aid to Al Gore. Tell me his trying to feed quotes to Ken Caldiera isn’t politicizing this debate?
The ‘debate’ such as it is doesn’t transpire in blog comments between anonymous people without any references. This is purely recreational.
I agree. But why then do you keep challenging me to get immensely deeper into this debate here in Matt’s comments section? You’re trying to score cheap rhetorical points by challenging me in ways that would require an immense amount of detailed commentary that you don’t yourself want to engage in.
I don’t care what faith you’re arguing in.
I do. I don’t enjoy exchanges that are full of crude ad hominem attacks and the imputation of bad faith. You apparently do. Well, I leave you to it. It reflects poorly on those who support public policy based on weak science.
If any of you had the qualifications to deal with the subject you might be more useful than for concern trolling, and you would publish like most sane people. You aren’t skeptics, you’re chaff. You aren’t taking up the research, you’re writing uninformed diatribes in blog posts.
Dude, do you grasp the depths of your own hypocrisy? You are not a climatologist, you’re clearly not capable of dealing with even the most elementary science issues in this debate, you’re not published in this subject, and all you do here is go on insanely paranoid conspiracy theory rants against anyone who makes even the slightest challenge to the notion that we should base our entire world economic policy on the weak science put forward in support of the AGW hypothesis. I don’t pretend to be a climatologist either, but it’s clear from examining the research that the case for AGW is not a strong one, and is greatly exaggerated up and down the board by virtually everyone speaking out publicly on the subject, from blowhards like Gore and Monbiet to supposedly respected scientists like Hansen, Schmidt, Mann, Caldiera, and the group from the IPCC. Unfortunately, my sense of the debate is that it will only be resolved by actual future climate changes, or lack thereof.