Human mortality in the extra-tropics exhibits a strong peak during the cold season and a strong trough during the warm season. There are identified hormonal changes which would appear to make this so. Perhaps it is because so much of human evolution took place in the tropics of Africa, we are better suited to warmer climates.
Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Turbulent Eddie
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Geoff Sherrington
Once again we have experts guessing about what makes people tick. Once again they have it wrong.
Lopez at al have made some assumptions that are easy to miss. One assumption, which jumps around a little, is a description of what a non-expert in climate change might think. Such an analysis leaves out a critical portion of the adjudicating public, that being the “expert” from a related field.
As an example, Steve McIntyre has done an enormous amount of “neutral” work on the standards of sampling and statistics used by a number of climate change authors. Commonly, Steve will find a method lacking before he offers guidelines on how to do a better job. Steve is not alone. Several neutral to pro-sceptical blogs are authored by people like Steve and between them they have been tremendously influential in carrying a message that all is not right. This message soon becomes contrasted with the establishment claims that the science is settled, when clearly it is not.
I have no hard evidence to assert next that the Man on the Clapham Bus is wired to be on the side opposite to the establishment and welcomes material that supports his naïve inclination. Maybe he has been exposed to modern art exhibitions where he prefers to class work as pure junk despite the expert critic waxing lyrical. Ditto with wines described in flowery terms by expert vignerons. Ditto for modern poetry. Ditto again for many endeavours where an expert pops us to tell us how to think, how to appreciate.
One little slip and they are gone.
Climate science has had that one little slip in the form of Climategate. After that, most offerings are not accepted as correct the first time round. They might be accepted in time, once there has been discussion and credible outcomes by several people expressing pertinent views.
In my own case, it was a post grad career in exploration geochemistry then mining then forestry then large manufacturing – all held to standards as a scientist might tend to do – which later provided a good deal of overlap with climate science.
My first exposure was in 1992 when geologist Warwick Hughes showed me data that Phil Jones was working on, data that were so poor compared to my involvement in numbers and statistics from the earth sciences that I was suspicious of climate science from the beginning. Again subjectively, I assert that people who have worked with numbers for many man years sometimes gain a “feel” for good data and bad data. In several sectors of science the treatment of estimated errors quickly tells a lot about the standard of the overall work. There are many, many papers from climate science that would never have passed muster, from error treatment alone, if compared to the way we did it.
There might be some perceived value in climate science for arriving at an outcome that was rigged, or when a certain outcome was each time given the benefit of the doubt in one helpful direction. There is no value in rigging results when looking for an ore deposit. In fact, it is counter productive to go drilling where there is no deposit when the stats are done properly.
In summary, the place of the expert from an overlapping field is usually under rated by people commentating on the establishment versus sceptical balance. Here, I suggest that such people are the ones that should be studied by sociologists and their comrades. They punch well above their weight in influencing the wider public.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Turbulent Eddie
OK, you coined it so you have to write the book:
Managing Climate Uncertainty for Oxymorons
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Geoff Sherrington
Roundup?
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by AK
<blockquote>Sorry, but that’s unpersuasive. It seems like belief.</blockquote>No, I was proposing a premise. It's intended to be persuasive to those with some understanding of how changing feedback loops in hyper-complex non-linear systems can produce sudden, unexpected, exponential movements in new directions. Movements with high exponential growth rates.
Anybody who can't see such exponential growth rates when they're right in front of their eyes, <i>e.g.</i> the exponential growth of solar installed base and exponential decrease in price (at, say, the factory gate), is probably not going to see the potential for sudden eco-system changes.
Anybody who can will hopefully see the implications of the study linked above.<blockquote>If there are no negative impacts, then what’s the risk.</blockquote>This shows a lack of appreciation of risk totally unacceptable (IMO) in somebody claiming to give policy advice. The fact that <b>you</b> are unpersuaded that a downside <b>does</b> exist doesn't mean that it <b>doesn't</b>. There's no logic here, just dishonest rhetoric in the service of advocacy. Basically, it's nothing but "preaching to the choir", because anybody not already locked into your worldview will see the fallacies in your argument.<blockquote>The risk of negative impacts of bad mitigation policies – like incentivising renewable energy and carbon pricing, are virtual certainties.</blockquote>An obvious straw man. Also not true. The <b>risks</b> from any carbon pricing sufficient to incentivize "renewables" is obvious and high, but <b>not a certainty</b> except in the same sense that the risks I mentioned are a certainty: we don't know that a downside <b>doesn't</b> exist, so the risk <b>does.</b>
The straw man aspect comes from your equation of <b>any</b> action to incentivize action to deal with fossil carbon with policies having a large economic risk. Policy options certainly don't lie along a single dimension. Given that there's a risk from continuing to dump fossil carbon into the atmosphere, and that the most loudly advocated policy options <b>do</b> carry the risks you've alluded to, the best course of action would seem to me to be searching for policies that accomplish the desired end <b>without</b> producing the undesirable effects.
Your advocacy of a relaxed regulatory regime for nuclear fission would seem to me to fit this definition perfectly. And, I'll mention that you seem to me to be talking out of both sides of your mouth when you denigrate any mention of "risk" from fossil CO2 while also frequently advocating changes to nuclear policies to deal with it: if there's no risk, there's no reason to change policies WRT nuclear.
Back to your straw-man argument, here specifically WRT carbon pricing. Let me start by mentioning that I'm against any form of specific carbon pricing, the following argument is grounded in economic analyses that I'm highly skeptical of but have been widely referenced (AFAIK).
AFAIK most of the "economic analyses" intended to demonstrate that "carbon pricing" won't have a significant negative effect on the economy assume a relatively small pricing "adjustment": perhaps the equivalent of $20.00/ton of fossil carbon released to the environment.
OTOH, again AFAIK, in order to make "renewables" cost-competitive at their current technological maturity, something an order of magnitude larger would be required. So the "carbon pricing" that would have little effect (so the "analyses" say) <b>isn't the same thing</b> as the "carbon pricing" that would serve to effectively incentivize "renewables". <b>Equating them creates a straw man.</b>
Which is, AFAIK, what you're doing. Of course, you could resort to "mommy mommy"ism: that's also exactly what the proponents are doing. Along with offering governments the obvious bait: more money.
A similar argument, but less focused, could be made WRT “<i>incentivising renewable energy</i>”. There are many ways to go about nurturing the growth and maturity of energy not dependent on fossil carbon, or at least not dependent on dumping a fossil-sourced excess into the environment.
There's absolutely no reason to assume that the <b>effect</b> of any specific policy in nurturing the growth of "renewables" would be linearly related to its <b>impact</b> on economic growth. So the obvious answer is to look for policies that will <b>foster "renewable" technology while also supporting economic growth.</b><blockquote>So, unless you can provide persuasive evidence – not just statements of your beliefs – and over policies that will increase economic growth, then I am entirely unpersuaded by your belief there is a risk we should spend money on.</blockquote>The "persuasiveness" of evidence depends on the worldview and understanding of the person to be persuaded. I linked to persuasive evidence above. That you're clearly not persuaded...
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by ticketstopper
The flaw with your meme of irreversible ecological changes due to CO2 is that single organisms matter. The cyanobacteria above occupies a specific ecological niche – even if high CO2 levels lead to permanent nitrogen fixing behavior change, then all that happens is said cyanobacteria will fail in its niche and be replaced by another.
There’s a reason why humans dominate the earth rather than dinosaurs, or plants, or bacteria, or what not.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Arch Stanton
The Son, will show up…wonderful.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by ticketstopper
It is far too simplistic and easy to call decisionmakers lazy.
It is far more likely that decisionmakers see personal benefit.
The same holds true for some researchers: if catastrophic climate change means easier/larger grants, there will always be those who choose that over any quixotic attempt at scientific objectivity (in their view), either subconsciously or consciously.
From a scientific point of view – it really doesn’t matter if the person knows they are skewing their results or not. The effect is the same.
IMO this is why Professor Curry’s complaint about the paucity of diversity in climate change research is so telling.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Michael
Peter,
Tol took some very limited data on death rates plotted against temp, misunderstood them, extrapolated to the entire world….and got some positive health effects from rising temps.
Besides that…..all good.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by aaron
Those possibilities exist regardless of CO2 level.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by AK
<blockquote>The cyanobacteria above occupies a specific ecological niche – even if high CO2 levels lead to permanent nitrogen fixing behavior change, then all that happens is said cyanobacteria will fail in its niche and be replaced by another.</blockquote>Actually, “<i>niche</i>”, in the ecological sense, is another myth. Eco-system changes usually involve <b>changes to niches</b> and their inter-relationships, to the extent that the term can even describe what's going on.
The point is, that the "permanent" change isn't consistent with the most simplistic models of how ecosystem participants respond to an external change, which in turn demonstrates that there's a lot more going on, and much greater potential for unexpected developments, than such simplistic models would suggest.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Arch Stanton
You agree with Psalm 2, then?
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by AK
<blockquote>It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that a tiny trace gas in the atmosphere could not have the significant effect that warmists claim it does.</blockquote>Much of how the world <b>really</b> operates is counter-intuitive. It's your intuition that's defective. Not the world.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Peter Lang
AK,
Sorry, I didn’t bother reading your rant. I got to the first “straw-man argument”, and recognised the nonsense wasn’t worth reading. I searched and found multiple uses of “strawman arguments” and can gather the essence of it.
I think you are trying to deny the obvious fact that renewables are not sustainable, can’t make much of a contribution to global energy supply, therefore cannot replace much fossil fuels, therefore cannot make much contribution to reducing global GHG emissions. Importantly they are hopelessly uneconomic and probably will remain so. They are not a solution.
On the other hand, nuclear has demonstrated it can meet requirements and supply a large proportion of the electricity in modern industrial economies. It is sustainable with fuel for millenia. It is clearly the major part of the solution to sustainable energy and to cuttting global GHG emissions over the course of this century. You’d have to be blind or an ideologue to not be able to accept the relevant facts.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Joshua
Winner of the irony for the day award:
“It is far too simplistic and easy to call decisionmakers lazy.
It is far more likely that decisionmakers see personal benefit.”
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by Arch Stanton
Amen
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by AK
@Peter Lang…
There’s none so blind as those who will not see. You demand to be persuaded, but then close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and yell “la! la! la! I can’t hear you!” when somebody tries to respond to your demand.
Why am I not surprised?
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by David Wojick
Within the climate debate there is a fundamental Kuhnian confusion with the concept of uncertainty. Warmers use the term to mean how bad will CAGW be?, as in the articles cited in this post. Skeptics use the term to mean is there a problem?, probably not. Thus the two opposing paradigm holders talk past one another, just as Kuhn described so well (and I did my Ph.D. thesis on). As always, the specification of a scientific question depends on what one believes. Where there are two schools of thought there are two different questions, each stated using the same words.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by anng
AK,
“No, I was proposing a premise. It’s intended to be persuasive to those with some understanding of how changing feedback loops in hyper-complex non-linear systems can produce sudden, unexpected, exponential movements in new directions. Movements with high exponential growth rates.”
Do you mean the sort of boom-and-bust at all scales that natural phenomena like populations of rabbits+foxes or the temperature history of the Earth have? There always tends to be a maximum, which economists should perhaps consider looking at. I think the Earth max ave-temp is ~ 26 degrees – quite high.
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Comment on Managing uncertainty in predictions of climate change and impacts by JCH
When it would get warm in the cold of winter, calves would die in droves. My Dad got rich treating those calves. In January-April he viewed a forecast for warm weather as money in the bank.
If Canada warms in the winter, they will experience elevated cold-season deaths.
My wife if a perfect candidate to die a cold-season death in Texas. There is little chance of that happening to her sisters in Dakotas.
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