Stacey | December 26, 2011 at 8:21 pm | Reply
Climate science is an oxymoron.
The word “science” in the name in a dead giveaway that it is NOT science, any more than the People’s Democratic Republic is a democracy.
Comment on Reducing the future to climate by ferd berple
↧
↧
Comment on Reducing the future to climate by ferd berple
“greater effort should be made to represent these possibilities in any analysis about the significance of future climate change”
To allow for this, you must first provide a mathematical boundary on the size of the unknowns going forward. However, as it is generally accepted that the universes is for all practical purposes infinite, then the size of the unknown is also infinite – in other words you cannot place a boundary on what you don’t know.
In other words, no matter how many possibilities you account for, it will be the ones you didn’t account for that are most likely to occur. Here is a simple demonstration:
let:
n = size of what you know or can imagine
infinity = size of what you have not imagined
then:
n / infinity = 0 = probability of your choices representing the future
(infinity – n) / infinity = 1 = probability something you haven’t imagined representing the future
↧
Comment on Reducing the future to climate by ferd berple
It is notable that climate models start to behave in a similar fashion (unstable) as they try and increase the resolution. The assumption is that they need more computer power and better models to overcome this.
An alternative explanation is that the unstable, high resolution climate models are a more accurate representation of the future than the stable, low resolution models. The future is not stable, it is inherently unpredictable.
↧
Comment on Science communication by maksimovich
In the case of Mann vs Mann (99/08l) the evidence is not at all surprising ie incoherence eg Gruber 2010
By avoiding the (calibrating) instrumental period, and by using
a fairly robust spectral measure for low-frequency performance,
the above coherence analysis has uncovered several
inconsistencies among the group of millennial reconstructions
that figured prominently in the latest IPCC report and
elsewhere. An immediate lesson from this is that simple visual
inspection of smoothed time series, grouped and overlaid
into a single graph, can be very misleading. For example,
the two reconstructions Ma99 and Ma08L, which have
previously been described to be in “striking agreement” (cf.
Mann et al., 2008), turned out to be the most incoherent of
all in our analysis.
Concluding that
Using inconsistent reconstructions to approximate the
temperature curve has one particular visual consequence.
Whether overlaying them in one figure or forming an average,
the result tends to be a cancellation of larger amplitudes,
because inconsistency here means to be indistinguishable
from random covariations. Together with the mentioned
synchronization through the instrumental calibration period,
such “synthesis” figures automatically resemble a hockeystick.
One might conclude that the antropocentric geometry is indeed Man(n)s work.
↧
Comment on Science communication by maksimovich
The link to the paper is here.
↧
↧
Comment on Climatic Change special issue on uncertainty guidance for the IPCC: Part II by Patrick Moffitt
“While the IPCC has yet to make use of them, there are methods that allow an even more precise characterization of uncertainties. “Expert elicitation” involves a set of techniques first developed in the decision analytic community. ”
It is acknowledged that there are cognitive biases at work that make this less reliable- however it has been my experience that the largest bias is in how the question was framed to the experts.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by Joshua
David -
However, my view is that the behavior they are identifying as biased is actually rational.
I don’t think that motivated reasoning implies irrationality, it merely implies a driving mechanism for how people reason in the face of controversy, how people analyze data given the implications of the resulting conclusions, etc.
It’s similar to how I view belief in Intelligent Design, or faith in god. Those beliefs, IMO, are not inherently irrational (or logical); in fact, they are entirely rational and logical contingent on certain starting premises. If you believe that a supernatural/omnipotent being exists and wants millions of children to starve to death each year, belief in ID can be logical and rational. If you believe that the bible is the word of god, then belief in god can be entirely rational and logical.
If you start with those beliefs, then any relevant data that you see can potentially be seen to confirm your belief.
I don’t understand the dichotomy you create between bias and rationality. I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive – but think of a Venn diagram of overlapping sets.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by GaryM
There is nothing scientific about political science or social science. They are, respectively, political and social polemicists for progressivism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html
Marx tried to turn politics into a science and the world has been paying for that disaster ever since.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by randomengineer
Rob, there’s nothing intellectually lazy about using experience, because unless you use experience, it isn’t very valuable. Experience is intellectual efficiency.
Bear in mind that political science studies seem to have a philosophical core assumption that a well informed voter is the goal. Everything is relative to that. A voter strategy of purposefully ignoring the entire election campaign and simply voting at the last moment for the most moral or smartest candidate seems to me to be just as viable.
And why? A candidate with what appears as a pretty solid moral foundation will tend to make moral decisions if elected and is probably going to vector into an agreeable direction. A candidate with a major league IQ is likely to do smart things. We’re talking vector, i.e. what’s the likely direction a response to an emergency or new issue will take.
As such I’d be willing to bet that voting strategies that are based on vector and not personalities or “deep understanding of the current issues” are just as viable — if not moreso. Of course, I’ll probably be laughed at by political science people and psychologists and sociologists (or any of the rest of the soft science types) for saying this because among other things (e.g. shallow and stupid) it’s counter to the notion of the presumed (given) utility of the well informed voter.
↧
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by GaryM
Rudolph Giuliani making sure the laws were enforced in New York is an example that what Marx said is interesting?
Marx may have been “interesting” to the extent that someone who is completely wrong about the entire core of his world view is “interesting.” I found Mein Kampf interesting too, as a view into the mind of a racist lunatic whose world view was similarly dangerously and completely wrong. So in that sense, I guess I would agree that Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto were interesting.
As for comparing city mayors to dictators, that simply waters down the meaning of the word. Let’s leave the emotional hyperbole to the progressives.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by David Wojick
Joshua, bias is by definition faulty reasoning, hence if it is systemic it is a form of irrationality. As Redlawsk put it “these affective biases may easily lead to lower quality decision making.” Thus motivated reasoning is presented as a systemic form of irrationality. I disagree.
If you don’t like the term irrationality then let me just say that I do not think it is a form of bias, nor that it leads to lower quality decision making, in the normal course of events.
Of course extreme cases are a form of insanity. But so is extreme cleanliness or any extreme version of normal behavior.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by Craig Loehle
Warmer is not pollution. Let’s consider disease. Since disease is always bad, let’s give everyone antibiotics every day, preemptively remove everyone’s appendix, and start everyone on chemotherapy right now—oh, wait, there are side effects? Who knew? Similarly the “cure” for global warming could be worse than the disease since the correlation between standard of living and energy use is almost 1 and since those better off can withstand climate extremes better. I don’t suffer much when it is subzero temperature because my house is insulated and I can afford heat.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by P.E.
Gary, the logical conclusion of that scientific ideology is the kind of rhetoric that you hear here about group x or candidate y being “anti science”. That’s a dead giveaway of somebody who wants to use “science” as a political pickax.
↧
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by P.E.
A candidate with a major league IQ is likely to do smart things.
Like getting fellated in the oval office? Don’t bank on it.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by P.E.
Not Marx. Max. ^^^
↧
Comment on Year in review: 2011 by P.E.
Hands down, this was my favorite thread:
<a href="http://judithcurry.com/2011/09/27/climate-scientists-are-different-from-the-general-public/" rel="nofollow">Climate scientists are different(?) from the general public</a>
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by Craig Loehle
I am curious what you think is a “sensible” energy policy, because some people think “sensible” means windmills that shred birds and bats and that stop at a moment’s notice. I think “sensible” is a push toward natural gas which is becoming plentiful, has much less N and S oxide pollution, no mercury to speak of, no ash residue, no particulates, and half the CO2 output of coal per BTU (should you think that is important). Sounds like a win-win to me, but some greens bemoan gas because it will allow people to maintain their standard of living and stay warm (I guess not enough guilt-assuaging suffering for their taste).
↧
↧
Comment on Year in review: 2011 by Fred from Canuckistan
Best Headline of the year:
“Global Warming Hysteria Cools Down”
Next year it will read
“Global warming Temperatures Drop Dramatically”
Just because it is fun to know that the current glacial interstitial period is very long in the tooth.
So go long on long underwear futures and have a wonderful 2012.
You have a great blog, keep up the great work.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by GaryM
By all accounts, Lenin, Mao and even Pol Pot were very smart. In their case, their intelligence lead to smart mass murder. The morality of the candidate is crucial. A high IQ…not so much. Reagan was no genius and I would take him over any of the leading lights of the left. Give me an average capitalist over a “smart” progressive any day.
↧
Comment on Evaluative premises by GaryM
Oops.
↧
More Pages to Explore .....
