Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by mosomoso

August 13, 2014, 10:28 pm

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The reason we should put emphasis on drought-proofing agriculture and urban water infrastructure is to anticipate a repeat of 1902 for Australian agriculture and 1888 for urban water supply in Sydney…to name the most extreme years. (I’ll leave the late 1830s and early 1790s out of this, for lack of precise data.) And while heat and fire conditions in 2009 were plenty scary, 1851, 1896 and 1939 (this latter a La Nina!) were as bad or worse.

I’m not sure there even was a price put on carbon in the bad years before My Sharona topped the charts. Those old pre-satellite gaffers just waited for the climate to change again – which it did. However they knew about dams, controlled burns, improved strains/breeds/practices etc. The result was us.

But it can be very hard to get climate change experts to take the slightest interest in actual climate change. Which is odd, when you think about it.

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Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by NW

August 13, 2014, 10:31 pm

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+1. I would add this: Laboratory studies of public goods dilemmas and similar games strongly suggest that a significant fraction of people are “conditional cooperators”–they’d like to play in the public interest, but they don’t want to be used and will withdraw their cooperation if they don’t think enough others are doing so. In fact most populations we sample seem to have enough of these people that even the real knaves do best by pretending to be conditional cooperators too. That can sustain very high and ongoing cooperative behavior–say among nations. But remember, the conditional cooperators get pissed off pretty easily. Asking the citizenry of developed democracies to shoulder these burdens without cooperation from most of the other big countries is a recipe for massive failure, disillusionment and withdrawal of cooperation by electorates who don’t want to play the fools.

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by Tom Scharf

August 13, 2014, 10:34 pm

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This explanation doesn’t really make much sense. Cook may believe humans are “the cause” (he believes a lot of things…), but 97% of scientists certainly do not believe that.

As I recall the IPCC says it is 95% certain that the warming from the mid 20th century is in the range of 51% to 95% from anthropogenic sources. That is, it is less than 5% likely that it is “the cause”.

It doesn’t add up. If you are simply stating that this is how Cook or the media misrepresents this consensus, then the text should make this more clear?

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by brent

August 13, 2014, 10:58 pm

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How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen
Environmentalists warn us that apocalypse awaits. Economists tell us that minimal fixes will get us through. Here’s how we can move beyond the impasse.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/09/how-to-talk-about-climate-change-so-people-will-listen/375067/

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by brent

August 13, 2014, 11:06 pm

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Climate change measures like ‘primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to appease the gods’, says Maurice Newman

He says “a scenario where nations are desperately competing for available energy and food will bring unpredictable threats, far more testing than anything we have seen in recent history”.

But he fears the “political establishment” is deaf to risks of global cooling because “having made science a religion, it bravely persists with its global warming narrative, ignoring at its peril and ours, the clear warnings being given by Mother Nature”.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/climate-change-measures-like-primitive-civilisations-offering-up-sacrifices-to-appease-the-gods-says-maurice-newman-20140814-3do0v.html

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by brent

August 13, 2014, 11:15 pm

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Low Carbon Corn Flakes

Food giant Kellogg announces efforts to battle climate change

The announcement by Kellogg comes two weeks after General Mills announced a similar sustainability policy
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2014/08/13/kellogg-climate-change/14012807/

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by thomaswfuller2

August 14, 2014, 12:12 am

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But when that prevalence of shared opinion (real, not questioned) is misrepresented constantly for political gain, the consensus’ credibility is diminished.

The true enemies of an acceptance of the consensus don’t have names like Watt or McIntyre. They have names like Mann and Gleick.

Until the consensus stands up to the phonies who have grabbed the microphone out of their hands, the consensus will continue to have big problems.

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by fizzymagic

August 14, 2014, 1:45 am

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<i>So I am not misrepresenting Cook’s data at all. In the very next paragraph I note: “The 97% figure comes from a paper by social scientist John Cook at the University of Queensland and colleagues, who quantified this consensus by analysing the abstracts of scientific papers on climate change.”</i> In other words, you <i>are</i> misrepresenting Cook's data, though perhaps not the conclusions he attempted to draw from it. The rest of your article attempts to show that this "consensus" is based on far more than unanimity of opinion; but since at the outset you misrepresent what the consensus is actually <i>about</i>, the rest of the article is basically irrelevant. Mr. Howard, if you want to present science to the public, it is critical to be accurate and to not make overreaching statements unsupported by the evidence. Your article here violated that requirement by implying that there exists a broad scientific consensus that human activity is the sole cause of warming in the 20th century. That is false. Period. Your attempt to cite Skeptical Science (which, btw, is neither skeptical nor scientific) is entirely irrelevant.

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Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by thisisnotgoodtogo

August 14, 2014, 1:45 am

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Thomas Fuller,
How many of them do you estimate there are of these enemies of reason?
How big is The Ship of Fools?

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by Paul Matthews

August 14, 2014, 2:31 am

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Join The Conversation:

https://theconversation.com/study-vindicates-climate-models-accused-of-missing-the-pause-29477#comments

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by WebHubTelescope (@WHUT)

August 14, 2014, 2:31 am

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”
PA | August 13, 2014 at 8:27 pm |

Well, the current non-El Nino is emblematic of the problem.

The experts were virtually certain it would develop based on models.

The model predictions from 1st quarter 2014 were grossly wrong.
”

That is nuts. The predictions have always been widely dispersed.
http://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/inline_all/public/NMMEforecastplume_graph_610.gif?itok=ElOtB7Ir

That’s why some of us are working on the fundamental physics.
http://azimuth.mathforge.org/

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by Barry Woods

August 14, 2014, 2:57 am

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Hmmm

cowtan and Way are also insiders at Skeptical Science

I am concerned that there paper and others by Cook and Lewandowsky are more about countering issues, pause, computer models poorly performing and consensus. And winning the climate wars, than science

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by thisisnotgoodtogo

August 14, 2014, 3:03 am

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WR said

“So we better get them something cheaper than coal.”
You’re kind. You also support a reasonable plan for nukes, for what can be done to some extent.
But what is happening is Obama is forging an international ban on loans for coal fired plants. It’s not as if he’s going to build nukes for them.

So keeping the poor in the dark is the Green plan. They have the money and lobbyists.

Dark and poor it will be.
.

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by beththeserf

August 14, 2014, 3:04 am

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Guess that was the consensus back then Pedro.
Beth the serf,

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by wrhoward

August 14, 2014, 3:10 am

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“I wonder how long it would take until WR Howard would feel comfortable saying “stopped”.”

I would never say that, because when would we be in a position to know that?

I am equally opposed to saying warming (or anything else) is “irreversible” as some of the literature claims. Some processes may be “irreversible” on time scales so long they may as well be “irreversible” for purposes of economic planning. Good example is the ocean buffering of CO2. All our understanding says it *will* happen but the time scales will be on 10^2 to 10^4 years. Including weathering takes this time scale (the “long tail”) out to 10^5 years. See

Archer, D., et al. (2009), Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 37(1), 117-134, doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100206.

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Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by wrhoward

August 14, 2014, 3:23 am

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Tom Scharf,

“phrasing it as “many of the potential impacts may already be locked in due to the long term sequestration of carbon in the atmosphere forcing us into adaption instead of mitigation” or such could make it more clear.”

Yeah fair enough. The Conversation has this algorithm that processes your text and tells you what level your writing is at (uh oh the grammar cops are already all over me ending a sentence with a preposition). It’s supposed to be at a 9th or 10th grade level. The editors had already critiqued an earlier draft saying it read too academic.

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by wrhoward

August 14, 2014, 3:28 am

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Welcome Back Kotter, what a great show!

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by wrhoward

August 14, 2014, 3:36 am

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Tom Scharf,

“If you are simply stating that this is how Cook or the media misrepresents this consensus”

I don’t know if Cook has misrepresented the consensus. I think the media have, in going from Cook’s “97% of abstracts” (which may or may not be correct – remember the co-authors of the paper rated many of the abstracts) to “97% of scientists” (e.g. Obama’s tweet). My critique is not so much of Cook’s estimate of the consensus but of the misuse of the word. For all I know Cook has underestimated the “consensus.”

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by Schrodinger's Cat

August 14, 2014, 3:44 am

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Analysis of the consensus may produce hundreds of different variations on what is believed about climate change and global warming. Perception is the only reality and most people understand that they are being told that 97% of climate scientists believe that mankind’s emissions are responsible for global warming, climate change and extreme weather.

Most people do not follow the subject and will not have the knowledge of the commenters that typically frequent this site. The consensus argument is quoted at them by journalists and politicians as though it constituted scientific proof. However, people can think for themselves and they don’t believe everything they are told by the press and government.

As the readers here are aware, mother nature is not cooperating with the climate models and the it is clear that our climate is full of uncertainties and is not well understood. There are those who believe that we will never have the computing power to model the climate in a successful manner. There are others who believe that there are serious flaws in the GHG theory or that the feedbacks are not understood.

Again, perception is the only reality and in due course Mother Nature will decide how our climate progresses in the future. There may well come a time when it is clear to the people that the consensus was completely wrong.

So, by their own PR, 97% of climate scientists were wrong! That could be an interesting outcome. This would make a very interesting debate.

What would trigger this event? The pause lasting 20 years? The onset of cooling? Would the consensus fall apart long before the crisis as its members seek to distance themselves from it? Would the faithful desperately cling to the model projections and insist that warming will resume tomorrow? Would the people back down and accept the voice of authority? I guess the choice of climate rests with Mother Nature but if I were to guess, cooling looks to be more likely than warming.

In the aftermath, would the concept of a consensus be blamed for creating a false truth about the science and shutting down critical challenge and debate? How much damage would be inflicted on the science and its leaders? Would the scientists accept collective responsibility or start blaming each other?

A consensus is not just false, it is unhealthy and can be a double edged sword. Those who live by the sword can also die by it.

Comment on Appeals to the climate consensus can give the wrong impression by TGBrown

August 14, 2014, 4:07 am

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I have a more fundamental quibble with the statement “the scientific evidence that people are causing climate change is overwhelming, and mounting”. “People are causing climate change” is so vague as to be nonsensical. Arguably, if the human race suddenly vanished in a great extinction, a climate shift could ensue due to massive changes in land use, uncontrolled forest fires, etc. But that is not the question on the table. The so-called “consensus” is that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a measurable causal influence on the natural fluctuations that have existed for millennia. That, presumably, is a testable hypothesis and the evidence is far from overwhelming. Indeed the ‘signal’ is so close to the noise that a reasonable null hypothesis–that natural fluctuations still dominate–has not been disproven (see Prof. Curry’s many entries on attribution). Simply citing a changing arctic or millimeters per year sea level rise is not sufficient to prove a causal relationship. Finding a proper, and repeatable causal relationship that one can actually explain is the gold standard of science. But it takes a lot of hard work to sort fact from fantasy; analyzing buckets full of scientific abstracts will not replace the need for hard work.