We are fooling ourselves if we think a carbon tax is up to the task of protecting us from the possibility of truly adverse climate outcomes.<blockquote.
I agree wholeheartedly. This is the key reason why carbon pricing cannot succeed.
Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by Peter Lang
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by Mike Flynn
Peter,
Governments need money.
Let’s have an oxygen tax. You can’t make CO2 without O2. Nobody escapes. Wow. Can I get a job as an expert?
Bugger.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by human1ty1st
It appears here that you’ve done exactly what Chamberlin is arguing against. You’ve picked one favoured offspring, only one different to the concensus. You appear to have learned nothing.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by human1ty1st
So you’ve picked a different offspring from the concensus. Congratulations you’ve learned nothing from this essay.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by jim2
The alarmists will use the drought for propaganda purposes:
“This is hardly a radical position. Our Department of Homeland Security has urged citizens to report anything dangerous they witness: “If you see something, say something.” We scientists are citizens, too, and, in climate change, we see a clear and present danger. The public is beginning to see the danger, too — Midwestern farmers struggling with drought, more damaging wildfires out West, and withering record summer heat across the country — while wondering about possible linkages between rapid Arctic warming and strange weather patterns, like the recent outbreak of Arctic air across much of the United States.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/if-you-see-something-say-something.html
But once the drought abates, they will say it doesn’t matter to the big picture because it only regional.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Mike Flynn
Maybe one day a climatologist will come up with something as useful as a dung beetle.
Probably not, but stranger things have happened.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by human1ty1st
Where did your ‘quote’ come from?
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by JCH
La Nina dominance, which is speculated, would mean persistent drought in much of the American West. When there is an occasional El Nino, it will rain.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Mark Silbert
Who knows how many would come out of the closet if the stigma of skepticism were lifted and it became safe to do so?
Do you consider people over 60,70 to be to old to play in this game? I think not!
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by jim2
Mosher. Read up on quantum mechanics. There are several “theoretical spaces” in play. The science isn’t settled.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Barnes
The warmest position is based on the exact opposite of the null hypothesis – that is, co2 drives climate change and by golly, I will build models to prove it!
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Stephen Segrest
A statement before Dr. Curry’s BINGO! statement caught my eye: and fail to recognize that it is but one factor, and perchance a minor factor, in the accomplishment of the total result.
In numerous media venues, Dr. Curry has stated (where I hope I’m paraphrasing correctly): “My guess is that human influence is probably about 50%.”
In my personal layman’s journey to try and understand this wicked problem, I’ve “framed” this human influence question to be somewhere between ~50% (Curry) to ~100% (Schmidt).
Now I don’t really know what this “framing” actually means — as scientists spend 99% of their media effort arguing about problems, rarely talking about what they can probably agree on.
Both Dr. Curry and Schmidt agree that human influence is probably at least50%. What’s the significance of this?
Recently we saw a consequence of this, where Dr. Curry posted an OP/ED by Republican Congressman Laudermilk. In his OP/ED he heavily cited Dr. Curry (she was the only scientist he cited). In talking about human influence, Rep. Laudermilk inserted the phrase if any.
And this illustrates the problem, where many Republican leaders (Senator Inhofe being the Poster Child) and Others (Rep. Laudermilk) are “framing” the lower boundary of human influence to be zero or something insignificant.
So, I really have no idea what Jeb thinks in tackling AGW. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) appears to showing “good faith” in trying (and framing) this issue in his constructive dialogue with the environmental organization NRDC.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by jim2
And yet, the 1998 El Nino marked what appears to be a climate shift to higher temperatures. A Conundrum.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by AK
<blockquote>I am therefore puzzled how, as an author of the book Merchants of Doubt, Dr Oreskes managed to juggle these views with her critique of those who are skeptical about climate alarmism.</blockquote>Perhaps we can find the answer <a href="http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Oreskes2002.pdf" rel="nofollow">here:</a> Continental Drift by Naomi Oreskes (2002):<blockquote>Three factors contributed to the American animosity to continental drift. One, Americans were widely committed to the method of multiple working hypotheses, and Wegener’s work was interpreted as violating it. For Americans, right scientific method was empirical, inductive, and required weighing observational evidence in light of alternative explanatory possibilities. Good theory was also modest, holding close to the objects of study. Most closely associated with the University of Chicago geologist T.C. Chamberlin (1843-1928), who named it, the method of multiple working hypotheses reflected American ideals expressed since the eighteenth century linking good science to good government: Good science was antiauthoritarian, like democracy. Good science was pluralistic, like a free society. If good science provided an exemplar for good government, then bad science threatened it. To American eyes Wegener’s work was bad science: It put the theory first and then sought evidence for it. It settled too quickly on a single interpretive framework. It was too large, too unifying, too ambitious. In short, it was seen as autocratic. Features that were later viewed as virtues of plate tectonics were attacked as flaws of continental drift.</blockquote>[...]<blockquote>Third, Americans rejected continental drift because of the legacy of uniformitarianism. By the early twentieth century, the methodological principle of using the present to interpret the past was deeply entrenched in the practice of historical geology. Many believed this the only way to interpret the past, that uniformitarianism made geology a science, for without it what proof was there that God hadn’t made the Earth in seven days, fossils and all? Historical geologists routinely used faunal assemblages to make inferences about climate zones, but according to drift theory, continents in tropical latitudes did not necessarily have tropical faunas, because the reconfiguration of continents and oceans might change matters altogether. Wegener’s theory raised the specter that the present was not the key to the past—that it was just a moment in Earth history, no more or less characteristic than any other. This was not an idea Americans were willing to accept.</blockquote>[...]<blockquote><b>IV Lessons from continental drift: The tortuous development of scientific knowledge</b></blockquote><blockquote>Most people believe that when the weight of evidence becomes sufficiently great, scientists accept the reality of new phenomena and the truth of new theories. The case of continental drift suggests that reality is more complex. Scientific theories are not judged only in light of evidence, but also in light of methodological standards and epistemic preferences. Because these standards and preferences are forged prior to the onset of any theoretical debate, the legacies of past intellectual debates may weigh heavily in the outcomes of new ones.</blockquote><blockquote>The problem with continental drift was not a lack of evidence, nor a lack of causal explanation. The evidence presented by Wegener and du Toit has been largely confirmed by global plate tectonics, and Holmes’s causal account—mantle convection—is now generally accepted as the cause of plate tectonics. The problem with continental drift was a conflict with prior intellectual commitments. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, these earlier commitments—to Pratt isostasy, to the method of multiple working hypothesis, to uniformitarianism—were loosened, modified, or abandoned altogether. With this, the debate could be re-opened on the basis of new evidence, and a previously discarded idea resurrected.</blockquote>I've never read Oreskes' book; I lived through the Plate Tectonics revolution, and had never seen the point of reading a "history" of it written by the author of "Merchants of Doubt".
But in light of your question, and the subject of the main post, I'm wondering whether her book, as well as the piece linked and blockquoted here, were designed as "hit pieces" against her primary villain: “<i>the method of multiple working hypotheses</i>”. That, and any sort of “<i>uniformitarianism</i>”, are difficult stumbling blocks for IPPC “<i>science</i>”.
Besides, her account doesn't seem to hold water: “<i>continental drift</i>” could easily have been adopted as <b>one</b> of several “<i>working hypotheses</i>”. The reality behind that rejection is probably much better explained by Kuhn, while Oreskes is re-writing history (in semi-Kuhnian fashion) to justify enshrining a <b>single</b> hypothesis for IPPC “<i>science</i>”. (Look at the timing, too.)
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Barnes
Stephen – you really can be a piece of work sometimes. What do you make of obama’s declaration that human caused climate change is the most dangerous and important challenge of our time, and all the other over-hyped rhetoric coming from the left? Loudermilk makes a relatively benign statement, in his own words that is his interpretation of dr. Curry’s position, and you go all rambo on him for staking out such an egregious position. Have you taken the time to read, what was at the time the Senate minority paper on climate change, drafted by republicans led by that evil heretic inhofe? It is a far more rational overview of the state of our understanding of climate, and the science around it than anything dems point to, especially gores inconvenient work of fiction.
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Comment on A global ‘Iriai’ in place of the ecomodernist neologism by jungletrunks (@jungletrunks)
“This is the alternative vision…”
Yes, I agree with this overview generally. You should have started with these points after presenting your main theme. Societal trust is waning today because honesty in politics has been flooded with ulterior motives. When you start discussing regional processes etc., it naturally leads to the politics that would necessarily govern them, which is why this thread devolved into side debates about politics. But of course politics are still relative in context as an enabler of anything grand scale. But the right has a great deal of fear over centralized control and the naturally corruptive and ultimate monolithic force it leverages. Once centralized power takes root it’s game over because those in power will insulate themselves to maintain it, surrounding themselves with sycophants.
I’m digressing, but to use your transportation metaphor of creative destructive capitalism in a previous discussion; one of my first thoughts in this string was how would this process you describe of polycentricity allow for, as example, coal fired steam locomotives to run across the landscape as a precursor to the linear flow of technology that today is allowing for cleaner transportation solutions and mass transit? Wouldn’t the governing expert bodies have stopped the locomotive it in its tracks as environmentally unsuitable? Pardon pun. So how could transportation have evolved, especially when my example crosses regional boundaries of authority. So in essence isn’t the governing portion of your vision strangled by what could easily evolve into jackbooted environmentalism that shuts the door on any industry that scratches the environment before it has a chance to evolve?
Regardless, most of the sum of human knowledge has been gained in the last hundred years or so. We are still infants crapping in our environmental diapers. We’re going to make mistakes. We are also correcting mistakes. It’s preposterous today that segments of society don’t see the solutions to our current climate problem by looking into the future with a 2x power lens. The climate isn’t in so dire shape that a few decades of massive technological advancement and science won’t solve it. Getting back to politics, to me the left has gotten paranoid, and ironically, anti science and technology to have such short sighted vision.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by AK
Actually, to use Mosher’s term, it’s the same “ruling theory”. Basically, perturbed equilibrium, whether perturbed by CO2 or solar changes.
By contrast, a paradigm/programme based on modern non-linear dynamics would be very different.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by JCH
By 1999, the GMST was back to pre-1998 temps. It is the back-to-back El Nino events in the early 2000s from which the GMST has never retreated.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Mike Flynn
Stephen,
I guess if you have quoted Prof. Curry’s guess correctly, then her guess that human influence is probably around 50%, is probably around my 9 year old grandson’s guess, I guess.
I asked him to toss a coin. The first coin rolled down a drain, so I asked him to call heads or tails on a coin I tossed.
Blow me down, he called it correctly. Definitely completely ignorant of climatology. When I asked about the influence of human influence on climate, he said “I don’t know”. This is the precise statistical equivalent of around 50%!
The boy is obviously a genius. I presume he gets it from me. As to Jeb Bush, how does he expect to stop the climate changing? Does this mean everlasting drought for California, if climate change stops now?
How can the U.S., with 5% of the world’s population, stop the climate changing for the other 95% of the population? Maybe God does whatever the U.S. tells him (or her, or it), what to do, but my grandson finds this hard to believe.
Can you assist my grandson to understand all this? I am no expert.
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Comment on The method of multiple working hypotheses by Mike Flynn
Richard Arrett,
Can you provide a good solid cost benefit analysis for the subsistence farmer (rice, terraced) in Nepal?
He hasn’t got a pot to pi** in, no cash, no credit, and lives a life of grinding poverty.
Education will do him no good, nor will ensuring that more of his children will survive their early years. Electricity, even if provided at no cost at all, will only result in increasing deforestation and misery.
If you wish to discuss the matter, I will be happy to accommodate you. I have some practical experience of the situation. I presume you are more knowledgeable than me. I am always happy to learn.
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