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Jul132011
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Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Feedback to SJB
Jul 13, 2011 Climate: WG2 Sir John Beddington is seeking feedback on the climate impacts report I blogged about yesterday.
Jul 13, 2011 Climate: WG2 
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Reader Comments (71)
Aha - 20 posts are up at the BIS Blog.
BIS Digital Team - chastened if not chased methinks!
26 posts there now
Of the 20 posts that have been approved by the moderators, all are polite (even if many are only marginally so), 19 are highly critical of something or even all that he has written and the one that agrees is utterly sycophantic and written in the gushing style of the VC of the UEA. I suspect Sir John may be now wondering about the wisdom of setting out his stall and asking for comment.
"You’d be amazed at just how much buy-in there isn’t to opening up discussions.."
No I wouldn't.
Where is Bob?
"Where is Bob?"
Galloping across the plain with the CACC cavalry, I expect!
In other news, Sir John Beddington has been reported as suddenly unwell, and expected to be away from his desk for an indefinite period.
When asked the nature of his illness, a spokesman would only say that Sir John was “as sick as a parrot”.
@ James P
OH you are awful.
ps- do sick parrots float or Bob?
pps- good comment on this BIS blog i thought -
John Holmes says:
July 14, 2011 at 8:00 am
Your report assumes that AGW is settled science with little dissent, however considering the costs you are asking for the UK population to endure the bar set by the peer review system is not enough.
I understand your perception that anthropomorphic emissions are causing global warming (AGW). But despite what your advisors say, the SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED. It never is on any subject. In the case of climate science there is a lot of evidence that global temperatures have stopped rising (despite the continuing rise in CO2 levels) and that the impact of CO2 may not be as severe as the IPCC would have you believe.
Before using the state of knowledge as it is currently known in order to make far reaching policy decisions, you need to carry out Due Diligence studies in order to verify that what you are being told is correct. The level of detail required to execute proper Due Diligence for something as complex as the dynamics of climate change is truly enormous. Peer review is not due diligence. Neither are the IPCC reports. Certainly not the Garnaut reports.
Peer review of published papers is in general a coarse filter to ensure that if the evidence which the paper examines is valid and if the writers have done their sums correctly and if the results appear to make sense and add to the body of human knowledge then it’s OK to publish. Peer reviewers are unpaid experts in the same field as the writers of the paper. They seldom see all the basic data, the computer codes, the corrections, deletions and adjustments, the instrument calibration details, full details of all assumptions, etc, and their judgements are often coloured by their personal prejudices. Also they don’t get to see the experimental equipment and test environments or the actual samples that form the basis for the paper being reviewed. Usually none of this matters because scientific progress is self correcting. If a rocket scientist gets it wrong the rocket may crash or wander off course or fail in some other way. Oh dear, what a shame. Well, we’ll get it right next time round.
Predicting climate change is not rocket science. It’s much, much more difficult. And the consequences of getting it wrong may be much, much more costly. So what do you do, given that there may be something happening that could cause humanity immense harm unless we change something? You conduct proper Due Diligence studies – engineering quality, not academician quality.
You need to get the protagonists – those who claim we have a severe, looming problem – to assemble their best arguments and evidence to support their case. They should only offer papers which have been published with full public disclosure of all the data and computer codes so that the claims made within the paper can be reproduced by others. Then you appoint a Due Diligence Team (DDT) and give it a proper briefing (a Scope of Work). In the commercial world DDTs are usually independent disinterested contractors. They will need to see all of the things that peer reviewers usually don’t see as described above. In fact for proposals which will cost the community billions, the DDT will want to see a lot more. For example, many academic papers cite other previously published papers. These citations may have to be examined too. They will want to see the ‘bad’ data as well as the ‘good’. Also, published papers and other evidence may be invited for positions purporting to be contrary to the protagonists case. There is plenty of evidence which appears to throw doubt on many aspects of the IPCC case for climate change (the politically acceptable expression for AGW) and this will need to be subjected to DDT examination too.
Unlike the authors of the IPCC reports who are nearly all climate scientists, the DDT should comprise physicists, economists, engineers, mathematicians (especially statisticians), geologists, biologists and climate scientists. But no more than 25% of the team should be climate scientists. It’s doubtful if the DDT will ever be able to achieve certainty on any matter but they should be able to come much closer to the truth than has the IPCC.
Contrary to what you may have been told, the IPCC reports comprise the assessment by no more than 40 or 50 climate scientists, of all the published papers that in their opinion support in some way, climate change outside the realm of natural variation. Reviewers of each chapter in the reports were not permitted to see data which was not expressly provided in the relevant papers. In fact one reviewer was threatened with dismissal because he kept asking to see data. There is no audit trail for positions taken by authors of each chapter. None. In the business world, if a financier were asked to commit billions for some project on the basis of a report of the quality of any of the IPCC Assessment Reports he would tell you to “Go away – don’t waste my time”.
Looks like almost every comment that is up is skeptical!! Yay Bishop. Take some screen grabs in case Sir John Beddington or one of his minions is moved to try to memory hole the 'debate'.
In the interests of fairness I should record that my comments have survived moderation and been posted unchanged on SJB;s website.
“Predicting climate change is not rocket science. It’s much, much more difficult.
Computer modelling is widely used in car design, where the use of structural materials has to be optimised to keep down costs and weight while providing the necessary integrity and age/fatigue resistance. This encompasses a relatively small set of precisely known parameters whose behaviour is also well known, yet completed prototypes are still crash-tested, because that introduces too many variables to model accurately. QED?
“Predicting climate change is not rocket science. It’s much, much more difficult."
Sorry - I meant to introduce a note of general agreement there!
“Predicting climate change is not rocket science. It’s much, much more difficult."
Thanks guys! I have a friend who is a rocket scientist (he worked on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn) - I'll quote this at him :-)
Richard
I don't think it's meant to be a slur on rocket scientists - just a reminder that climate models are not nearly smart or comprehensive enough to make worthwhile predictions.
We are always accused of confusing predicting weather with climate...
'Predicting Climate Is HARDER than weather...'
otherwise the Met Office wouldn't be wanting an even bigger computer ;) !!!
There is something very wrong here.
Only one message in support has been allowed through moderation.
This is unbelievable.
What are they up to?
Richard Betts
Welcome back.
I note that you tweeted on 11 July 2011, "Our report published today has looked how climate change abroad will affect the UK"
Somebody jerked your chain, so you then tweeted on 11 July 2011, "But shd hv said "could" not "will"!
So the sequence is:
"will affect the UK" - your tweet no. 1
"could" not "will" - your tweet no. 2
"could affect the UK" - see "International Dimensions of Climate Change" - http://tinyurl.com/4jfwb4b
"how the UK is likely to be affected" - see - ditto - http://tinyurl.com/4jfwb4b
"the UK will be vulnerable" - see "Preparing for the Future" - http://tinyurl.com/6gnlp68
So, "will", "could", "could", "is likely", "will be".
Which is correct?
Here is a quote from SJB printed in one the peer reviewed papers to be found under "Evidence Base" in the document "International Dimensions of Climate Change":
"In his introduction to the new Guidelines on the Use of Scientific and Engineering Advice in Policy Making, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, writes: “Climate change, security, pressures on the supply of energy, food and water, health and migration pose unprecedented and inter-connected challenges to the world. Science and engineering are central to identifying, understanding and addressing these challenges.”
The tone hardly reflects the scientific uncertainties underlying these statements, does it?
"the Met Office wouldn't be wanting an even bigger computer"
Funny how Piers Corbyn regularly manages to out-predict them using an old PC...
Brownedoff:
Thanks for the welcome back.
Nobody "jerked my chain"! The first tweet you mention was my re-tweet of Foresight's original message, which I immediately followed up with my own correction to their wording (from "will" to "could"). So I think it's clear I prefer "could" not "will" or "is likely to".
James P (1:04pm)
Thanks - yes, I realised it wasn't meant as a slur on rocket scientists, I just took it as an amusing way of saying how hard the challenge is for us in developing climate models! I realise we have a long way to go there.
Jul 15, 2011 at 11:10 PM | Richard Betts
It is clear that you do not read before acting.
You tweeted information that contained the word "will".
Corrections are notoriousy ineffective.
I suspect that if you had any greenish followers they would have re-tweeted your "will" message but overlooked the "correction" as being er ... "inconvenient".
Also, I did not ask for your preference, I asked which of "will", "could", "could", "is likely", "will be" is correct.
However, if we take your preference (as a member of a Lead Expert Group) "could" as being the correct answer, then why is it that government spokesmen continue to employ phrases like "is likely" and "will be" in the face of so many scientific uncertainties?
What is the point of "Lead Expert Groups" if their advice on uncertainities is disregarded?
Just had a look at the subject of your tweet - "International Dimensions of Climate Change" published 11 July 2011; found 233 "will", 101 "likely" and 129 "could".