Bishop Hill Don't be a denier
Aug 24, 2011 Jonathan Adler has some interesting thoughts on scepticism at everyone's favourite US law blog, the Volokh Conspiracy. His article was prompted by the decision of New Jersey governor Chris Christie to first veto some green legislation (on the grounds that it wouldn't work) but to simultaneously acknowledge that greenhouse gases affect the climate, a position that has led to much criticism from his own side.
Those attacking Christie are suggesting there is only one politically acceptable position on climate science — that one’s ideological bona fides are to be determined by one’s scientific beliefs, and not simply one’s policy preferences. This is a problem on multiple levels. Among other things, it leads conservatives to embrace an anti-scientific know-nothingism whereby scientific claims are to be evaluated not by scientific evidence but their political implications. Thus climate science must be attacked because it provides a too ready justification for government regulation. This is the same reason some conservatives attack evolution — they fear it undermines religious belief — and it is just as wrong.
Reader Comments (53)
Very good. Science and politics are mixed up by left and right alike to everybody's detriment. How about simply taking the measurement of CO2 emissions as the basis for a need for action, and dumping the rest of it?
Climate Change - there is no denial of planetary climate change
Global Warming - no one is arguing against global warming
Anthropogenic Local Warming - yes that happens, UHI
Anthropogenic Regional Warming - yes that happens too, land change use.
Anthropogenic Global Warming - in current theory, and from simple lab experiments, increasing levels of CO2 should mean increasing temperatures, but the jury is still out on that one. Temperature is still the main driver of global atmospheric CO2 concentrations, nothing has changed to overturn millions of years of evidence.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming - that is simply a question of belief, a political standpoint, it's bollox.
Philip
Because CO2 implies what?
Topical IMO if not O/T
That term "Presstitutes" might find wider useage!
From comments at http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/17138#comments
"WWS says:
August 23, 2011 at 2:33 pm
credibility is about as easy to regain as virginity.
dhunter says:
August 23, 2011 at 4:02 pm
I hope you are all right.
I just wonder when, if ever, the presstitutes are going to realize the magnitude of their malfeasance and treat this abject failure as a human tragedy and not a kING, and when if ever they will give solid American citizens like Sarah Palin, Rick Perry and the Tea Party a small margin of the respect and credit they deserve for stopping the insanity of uncontrolled government redistribution."
Interesting article on trust there too.
Buffy, "Because CO2 implies what?"
I had in mind something along the lines of Mac's comment (11:37 AM). The measurement of emissions is arguably less ambiguous and less contentious than either atmospheric CO2 concentrations or global temperature measurements.
Sorry, but Sarah Palin, Rick Perry and the Tea Party are just nutters who play to the lowest common denominator.
Unfortunately the CAGW debate seems to attract nutters from both sides in equal numbers.
In America right now there two types of science - Democrat Science and Republican Science - both are wrong.
I am broadly persuaded that human CO2 emissions may tend to warm the atmosphere, but I don't agree that it is a bad, nor that that it is containable / reversible, nor that the rate at which it occurs has been shown to be predictable.
In particular I don't believe that any of the prooposed "solutions" feasible. Firstly it's not clear that it's a problem and secondly none will work anyway.
The majority of human CO2 emissions come from activities such as food and industrial production, and from home heating - things that simply aren't discretionary and cannot be reduced.
What is most offensive about CAGW is that thanks to a cabal of stupid third-rate psyentists (BBB to get into UEA to read Climate Science - CCC in old money; never let this be forgotten), all kinds of creeps have been furnished by "science" with a pretext to do what they can't get a democratic mandate to do.
The left has seized on CAGW as providing grounds for wealth taxes on large cars and houses when in fact there is no justification. Authoritarians of all stripes have seized on it as a pretext to curtail liberty. The Mafia like it because of the fraud. Computer criminals like it because of the fraud. Osama bin Laden liked it because it proved America hated God. Enron liked it because it was another crooked way to get rich. And so on.
"nutters who play to the lowest common denominator" seems to be an acknowledgement that the large majority of people agre with them and are thus "nuters". Typical of alarmists that they are incapable of producing a factuakl argument and rely on spraying insults on all and sundry.
Personally I wish we had anybody close to the leadership of any of our major parties with 100th the brains and integrity of Palin. But then I would like to country to be well run rather than looted by parasites.
J4R,
you've mentioned the BBB and CCC thresholds before. Could you or another Right of Ponder, enlighten us colonials on this subject? Do different scientific educational billets really have different grade-specific admittance hurdles?
NC
I am a CAGW sceptic who believes, no - knows also that Palin is a nutter.
Anyone who puts crosshairs on political web sites and pamphlets is a nutter.
There is only one SCIENTIFICALLY acceptable position on climate science --
Venus: No Greenhouse Effect
and that is that the consensus is incompetent and there is NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT, as promulgated by that consensus, at all.
Well worth bringing to our attention Bish. I even like the provocative title. As with any fresh and thoughtful perspective from the States I think there are lessons for the UK, where the situation is very different for this reason: we have no Christy standing alongside a Christie. We really have no dissenting climate scientists who are willing to be so identified by our mass media (or the media do not identify them, I don't know which it is). I mean dissenting from warming being an imminent crisis requiring radical decarbonisation policies of course, not disputing the greenhouse effect itself. The discussions at Science of Doom and Climate Etc are enough for many of us on that.
Richard,
The most thoughtful general topic columnists here in the states, Eugene Robinson, for example, seem required to "touch wood" on CAGW, but the better one's always refer to anthropogenic "contribution" and don't make us 100% responsible.
I suspect that there is a fair amount of stealth disbelief in the C in CAGW, but politicians need to pick their fights and this one may go away by itself, at least here in the US, so why fight it and risk one's political capital.
Unfortunately, we have some real crack-pots on the skeptic side leading to questions about evolution and the bible, if I broach my views in the wrong company.
Mac
I agree it is important to distinguish between AGW and CAGW, and also to distinguish between "scientific scepticism" and "policy scepticism".
Clearly it is possible to accept that human emissions of GHGs have a warming influence on climate but not think that the chances of imminent "catastrophe" are high.
I guess it would be interesting to know whether "CAGW" has some kind of implied timescale - would a commitment to ongoing sea level rise that would severely impact some small island states be "catastrophic" if the committed impact were not actually realised for a couple of centuries? In my book that's still a very important issue, but there seems to be a need (by some) to demonstrate that severe impacts will happen very soon, but nevertheless are still avoidable by urgent action (even though these last 2 points may be mutually exclusive!)
The AGW/CAGW distinction is particularly useful because I think we could all get a lot further if we thought about CO2-induced radiative forcing as merely one additional driver of climate change and variability (on top of UHI, land use, solar, natural modes of internal variability, etc), to allow us to plan ahead in making climate-dependent strategic decisions (ie: adaptation) - and not merely as something that needs to be addressed through emissions cuts (or not).
The whole climate issue is far more multi-faceted than merely being about decarbonisation....
J4R
Or Maurice StrongWe may still be dealing with the sane when it comes to the science (even if they are in 'A'-level terms pretty near the bottom of the educational barrel) but those who are driving the bus are fanatics and like most fanatics have only the loosest grasp on reality especially where that reality does not chime with their version of reality.Right as far as you go; wrong on a couple of critical points.
Food and industrial production and home heating are discretionary and the eco-fanatics claim that all three can and must be reduced.
Remember Timothy Wirth:
Unfortunately, these are people who have the ear of government (or are part of government) so their ravings are treated with respect, whereas if these quotes had come from you or me ...
As a Tea Partier myself, I have to take issue with Mac's above characterization that we are 'nutters'. All we really want is to advance the principles the USA was founded on. We want to keep taxes low and goverment power restrained. I was just at a Tea Party meeting a couple of weeks ago where the topic of voter fraud was the main concern. Voter fraud is one of the many problems that the government is aware of but will not fix. Invoking Evolution and C02 are red herrings that Warmers throw out there to distract from real problems.
Andrew
Bad Andrew,
It might be worthwhile to re-read the Declaration of Independence. A lot of the complaints were addressed to denial of government services particularly with regard to dispute resolution. i too, would like our present government to be much smaller and less intrusive.
All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Oops, correction, it's from the crosshairs.
=====================
But everybody who signed the Declaration of Independence was a "nutter" too.
There, that proves it.
Or not.
Deriding those you disagree with as nutters saves having to engage in debate with them about their ideas. Low taxes and small government, what a bunch of fruitcakes, those are the sort of ideas that will bring down western civilisation. Taking large amounts of tax from the hard working to spend on the indolent while using every excuse to regulate every little aspect of people's lives, those are the policies of non-nutters.
Adler's article points out the problems created by mixing politics and science. ... If you make a scientific statement, then someone will spin a political connotation from it. If you make a political statement, then someone will trump your values with their science. There are no winners.
Isn't it simply the case that global warming is a practical issue, only dimly illuminated by science? To a very high degree of certainty, science predicts a rise in temperature of between 0.3 K and 10 K for a doubling of CO2. The climate response time varies inversely with sensitivity, meaning that the ambiguity is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
Even atmospheric CO2 concentrations do not easily resolve the question marks, because natural exchanges of CO2 are so much larger than industrial emissions. Industrial emissions are the original source of the chain of AGW scientific argumentation, they can be reliably estimated, therefore any changes in their level can at least be verified.
So really, what is wrong with simply treating the industrial emissions as a constraint in the context of achieving a likely future of 9 billion healthy (and opinionated) citizens of 200 peaceful, independent nation states?
I've been waiting for skeptic blogs to take note of the interesting U.S. debate stirred up by Huntsman and Christie:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2011/08/23/conservative-pushback-on-republican-fanaticism/
On this post, I also note another reaction from somebody many of you are probably familiar with-- Ronald Bailey over at Reason:
"Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler has a sharp analysis over at the Volokh Conspiracy of what might be called Republican “Climate Change Derangement Syndrome."
"To a very high degree of certainty, science predicts a rise in temperature of between 0.3 K and 10 K for a doubling of CO2."
Do give up your day job, Philip, that is pure comedy gold.
"So really, what is wrong with simply treating the industrial emissions as a constraint in the context of achieving a likely future of 9 billion healthy (and opinionated) citizens of 200 peaceful, independent nation states?"
Because we don't know what the importance of those emissions are in terms of the climate, but we do know that they are directly proportional to global economic growth, the one proven means of lifting people out of poverty. Some argue that I should make vast behavioural changes to cut my carbon footprint to benefit my grandchildren but they are unable to indicate what that benefit might be in any but the vaguest terms. However, if I continue to grow my carbon footprint at the current rate, I can be very confident that my grandchildren will be very comfortably well off when I shuffle off this mortal coil. I think I'll pursue the latter course of action.
Philip,
To a very high degree of certainty, science predicts a rise in temperature of between 0.3 K and 10 K for a doubling of CO2.
That's a use of the word 'certainty' I've never enountered before.
There is little difference between the Tea Party and some fundamentalist environmental groups I could mention. They all want their religion(s) and extreme views to be right,left and centre in the political and scientific debates.
It is important not to let superstition back into science, both the concept of original sin and belief in CAGW are equivalent superstitious nonsense.
As I said, in America there is now Democrat Science and Republican Science - both are wrong.
Thanks for stopping by, Keith Kloor, and for the open debate you have fostered in these areas for many moons. And thanks for a authentic Tea Party perspective, Bad Andrew. Not all of us in the UK buy the nutter line for those concerned with human freedom and limited government. But the criticism of Chris Christie has nothing to add to libertarian thinking. It is stupid.
As Richard Betts notes;
"I agree it is important to distinguish between AGW and CAGW"
Particularly as AGW (magnitude unknown) has so far proved benign and CAGW lies outside the bounds of possibility as its two supporting legs are not planted on fact. Fact 1 - increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 cause global planetary temperature increases - not proven and contrary to observational evidence. Fact 2 - a positive feedback exists which explains why warming is greater than would otherwise be explained by fact 1 - jury still out both on magnitude and sign. Can I suggest that what we know so far is;
Delta T=0 x +/- f
Yes, "it is possible to accept that human emissions of GHGs have a warming influence on climate" but only if you want to. And by the way, since you freely use the term, may I point out that atmospheric gasses of any stripe do not act as greenhouses do. If we are to call them any name at all, it would first be fairer to define how they work and choose a descriptive name from that.
"There is little difference between the Tea Party and some fundamentalist environmental groups I could mention."
I would agree with that. And while I've been beating up on the Rick Perry/Marc Morano worldview this past week, anyone familiar with my blog (as Richard Drake seems to be) knows that I dish it out equally (if not more so) to the "fundamentalist" green/liberal wing, especially those that are reflexively anti-nuclear and anti-GMO.
Thing is, in the UK we have our own politicians to worry about... those that signed up to the UK Climate Change Act, to care to much about American politicians ;) !
Barry Woods,
Sorry for surfacing our problems here. I can see that yours are much more worrying than ours.
The point I believe our politicians need to understand is the reason they are being bombarded with 'facts' on AGW/CAGW is not because it is difficult to understand but that it is only at theory stage. In political language, proponents of AGW/CAGW are lobbyists.
DocBud and SayNoToFearmongers,
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the 0.3 - 10 K statement. Amusement aside, the point I was making is that climate science gives almost no useful guidance on what to expect from increasing CO2 levels. The results may be trivial (which for what it's worth, is what I think), but it is also possible that they could be more serious.
DocBud,
When you state that we know emissions are directly proportional to economic growth, I think you are making the same type of mistake the greens make when they claim that our use of resources is not sustainable. In doing this, they confuse physical resources with our use of them. For economic growth, the basic requirement is cheap and reliable energy supplies, not fossil fuels.
I continue to want to understand the mindset of our politicians and I think you've hit one part of it, simple seeker. They don't see CAGW as untested and they don't grasp the significance of this. Another factor is that it gives some a great sense of purpose. Not every lobbyist offers that. But this will vanish away in the end. Let's hope we still have some economy then.
Gov. Christie wrote:
I'd stop one level earlier in the logical chain than he does, that is, before "these changes are impacting our state." And not only because I detest the usage "impacting." I suspect that a northerly state [New Jersey in the present instance] is more likely to benefit from a marginally warmer climate.
To go back to the main point of Adler's article, I agree -- there is far too much blanket dismissal of all things mentioned in the same breath as climate. As with many things in politics, a multi-dimensional continuum of opinion is often simplified to a binary set of polar opposites: (a)mankind's fossil fuel usage is going to cause a global calamity, hence must be stopped immediately with "heroic measures"; vs. (b)it's all hooey. Some of this no doubt is due to the media's predilection for a simple narrative, but some of it reflects a real polarization in attitudes.
Warning: Beyond this point is speculation, enter at your own risk.
A large section of the populace sense that "cap-and-trade" and "feed-in tariffs" and "carbon taxes" are primarily more methods to remove money from the hoi polloi and transfer it to either crony "capitalists" or well-connected groups, in all cases increasing the power and scope of government. It is indeed difficult to follow the logical chain of those who claim catastrophe is in our future, and decide at which step one disagrees with the conclusions. Consider the catastrophic AGW argument as a train; within the informed skeptic community, there are significant disagreements over the station which one considers the jumping-off point. But those who are not scientifically literate, see a train headed for a policy destination to which they don't want to travel, and simply refuse to board that train at all. It is perhaps an easier decision than to start down what appears to be a slippery slope, with reasonable-sounding arguments leading one to perdition.
I believe Adler is correct, only fundamentalists believe that ther are one set of beliefs and one set of activitiesnarising out of those beliefs. Christie believes humanity is having an effect on the environment, so do I, and so are elephants, we're all part of the Eco system and so will affect it, thebquestions are:
To what extent;
What can we usefully do about it;
What happens if we do nothing.
There are millions of different opinions on the answers to these questions and anyone, or any organization, that claims they've got them off pat is deluded.
Mike,
Yes, I take your point but I think you know I was referring to proponents with organisational sophistication created out of an income stream. Other than the GWPF fitting that definition (although a minnow), do you know of any other?
HaroldW
I really like your train analogy, I think it is very true!
Although there ought to be more than one choice of final destination - "Would passengers for Adaptation please change at AGW".... :-)
Richard,
I am sure they do act with some sense of purpose and hope I am never disappointed on that. What I would have hoped is that the hype could have been set aside for long enough to look at the basic tenets of the GW hypothesis before committing to extraordinary expenditure and attendant hardships. Where was the due diligence?
@ jferguson
In the UK the usual basis of university admission is the A Level grades you obtain. A Level is an exam sat at the age of around 18 and graded A to E, with all grades being a pass. Grades below E are simply "U" for "ungraded".
Historically about 8% of candidates got an A. Point scores per paper below 50% would earn a U - you didn't pass an A Level by getting most of the answers wrong. Most people did 3 A-Levels, 4 being unusual and often a feature of the subject - for example, Maths A Level was split into Pure and Applied Maths and counted as two A Levels. You could do a single Maths A Level, but it wouldn't be thought an adequate foundation for a degree.
Over the last 30-odd years, the number getting As has steadily inflated to the point where about 28% got an A. At the same time the number outright failing fell to the point where almost nobody did. It is possible, for example, to get an A, a passing grade, in Maths even if you score only 20% or so. That is, someone who gets almost all the answers wrong still passes.
This rise in pass rates has been accompanied by a decline in course difficulty and content. You can get a Maths A Level without having studied calculus, for example - it's optional and you can do easier things instead.
To address this grade inflation, a new A* grade has been brought in which is awarded to about 8% of candidates. This is thus reasonably comparable to the original A grade, and in effect moves all the others down, so today's A is really a B, and so on.
The basis of university entrance is that grades are converted into "points" on the basis of A* = 140, A = 120, B = 100, and so on. The university then sets a tariff and those with fewer points will not get in. The average entrant to Cambridge has about 560 points, for example, which is A*A*A*A*. Somewhere like Imperial would be similar, perhaps a little lower (there have always been about 5 universities in the UK of Oxbridge standard, but these two still have sufficient cachet to set a slightly higher entrance standard).
The tariff to read Climate Science at UEA is a mere 300 points, which is three of today's devalued Bs. If one considers that the new A* grade is the top grade, then BBB actually means CCC.
Compared to the other university in East Anglia, entrants to UEA are thus laughably thick. A devalued grade B or better is obtained by about 55% of A Level candidates, meaning someone who goes to UEA with three of them may well be in the bottom half of the class overall - i.e. in the bit that lies between the 50th and 55th percentile.
This is the "authority" from which it is argued that the sky is falling. UEA has, however, always been notoriously thick, and people who now teach or research there would be about as thick as the students, only older.
There is probably the odd exception. For someone who is quite bright but who absolutely needs to be the smartest person in the room, any room at UEA would work. So some bright people perhaps end up there - just like you sometimes meet someone intelligent in HR or the police force, for example.
Given that doing climate science properly would require a grasp of statistics, then you'd think an undergraduate degree with a large maths component would be a prerequisite. In fact you don't even need to have a maths A Level, and the likes of Jones and Mann do not as far as I know have any training in, nor even grasp of, good statistical technique worth a damn. They've reached a consensus that they don't need any, and that anybody who has some and disagrees with them is a denier fit only to be hated.
Sorry, addressed to Richard Drake's comment. Can one have too many Richards?
It is possible, for example, to get an A, a passing grade, in Maths
Sorry, that should be an E.
simpleseekeraftertruth
Hmmm .... maybe one man's "due diligence" is another man's "attitude to risk" ... ?
"There is little difference between the Tea Party and some fundamentalist environmental groups I could mention."
So which are these fundamental environmental groups who want smaller government and lower taxes?
The other bug bear I have about the Tea Party is they don't actually drink tea. I think if these fundamentalists actually had a cuppa they would view the world a lot differently.
http://www.twinings.co.uk/tea-talk/
simpleseeker
As I said, it depends on your point of view.
If you have bought into the AGW meme, as most politicians appear to have done, then it is the opponents who are — by their definition — the lobbyists, a lobbyist being someone who is trying to persuade you to his way of thinking.
It's just unfortunate that sceptics have not managed to create a powerful enough lobby. Perhaps we could see the gaping holes in the warmist arguments and assumed that politicians could as well.
J4R, thank you much for explaining this.
One might suppose that very bright people who were able to find their way to top institutions would do so because they would be surrounded by other very bright people and it would be much more interesting, perhaps exciting. I suppose this could be the basis for an assumption that failing some outside reason, faculty at a lesser institution are themselves very likely to be lesser.
@ jferguson
I think so. Going to UEA is the only chance such people have to be top rather than bottom of the class for once.
Philip, fossil fuels currently provide the majority of cheap, reliable energy, hence the variations we have seen in emissions in some countries due to the GFC. The proportionality factor will reduce over time but for now, just as for the past few decades, global economic growth, and with it poverty reduction, are closely linked to carbon dioxide emissions. In cost-benefit terms, the certain cost of legislated emissions cuts as opposed to the highly uncertain costs, if any, of not making those cuts when weighed against the benefits of global economic growth and poverty reduction or the largely speculative benefits of making cuts makes the 'do nothing but adapt if and when necessary' the only policy that makes any sense to me.
DocBud:
Thanks, I appreciate your replies. I promise I am not arguing for legislated emissions cuts or for windfarms - at worst a miniature carbon tax to fund development of new technology. For the reasons I sketched out yesterday, the uncertainty over CO2 is unlikely to go away any time soon, and I see diversification of energy supply as the way to respond to this uncertainty without compromising growth and development.
The muddling of politics and science described in the Bishop's post means that it is becomes difficult for sceptics to explore a positive vision for the future, because discussion so quickly becomes mired in the green's scientism: I think this is very damaging. The muddle is at least in part the result of the uncertainty. Therefore, I am interested to find out how the uncertainty can be short circuited (i.e. ignored) when discussing responses.