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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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By this measure, it turns out climate models are remarkably high quality. In fact, they’re better than almost any commercial software that’s ever been studied. They’re about the same level of quality as the Space Shuttle flight software
That quote (not just the part I copied, but the entirety) sounds about as credible as an an Internet "one weird trick to a [whatever]," but why anyone would compare something to the Space Shuttle to attest to its quality is baffling.
Has the author heard of the Challenger and Columbia?
Not to make the light of the victims of the Space Shuttle fiasco, but at least they were willing participants.
There are some parallels between the Space Shuttle and "climate change science"--they're not 100% frauds to be sure, and there's probably even some good to come out of the programs. But the fraud aspect of them is never far from the surface, and at the end of the day their main purpose and effect seems to be separate American taxpayers from their money.
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TLP
climber
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blahblah, you have in the past been the source of some worthy posts, but this last one is not. Surely you are aware that both shuttle failures were due to simple mechanical parts failing, not the software. So, your point about Challenger and Columbia is intentionally and totally misleading. If this type of clear deception is standard in the legal profession, you can understand why it is held in such low regard by many who are not part of it.
I for one think that the shuttle program was immeasurably more valuable than a trillion+ dollar (when all the veterans' costs are included too) unjustified war in Iraq. But the conservative comment-sphere has no problem with that incredibly immense waste of taxpayer money, nor with all of its unintended global political consequences.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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blahblah, you have in the past been the source of some worthy posts, but this last one is not. Surely you are aware that both shuttle failures were due to simple mechanical parts failing, not the software. So, your point about Challenger and Columbia is intentionally and totally misleading. If this type of clear deception is standard in the legal profession, you can understand why it is held in such low regard by many who are not part of it.
I will grant that, to my knowledge, there was no relationship between the Space Shuttle software and the two disasters, but I've also never heard there was anything particularly special about the shuttle software.
The entire comparison of climate models to Space Shuttle software seems daft and a silly way to try lend prestige that the space program still has (despite its occasional, albeit spectacular, failures) to something unrelated.
I know a lot of science cheerleader types like the shuttle, but it's my understanding that most real scientists understand that shooting humans into space and (sometimes) bringing them back alive serves few legitimate scientific purposes (obviously it's an impressive feat of engineering) and squanders enormous amounts of money that could better be spent elsewhere.
I vaguely recall one space shuttle "experiment" (designed by school kids) to see if earthworms grew more or less silk in zero-G. Turns out they grow just about the same. That was one of those "there's something fishy going on here" moments, like when global warming morphed into climate change (thereby giving every nitwit a panic attack whenever the weather is substantially cooler than average as well as when it's warmer).
For whatever it's worth, if a certain portion of my income is going to be given to scientists whether I like it or not, I don't have a problem with the modelers getting a good chunk of it. I'd just like there to be some scrutiny to make sure they're not just "hind-casting" and using other tricks of their trade.
Remember that these climate model guys aren't so different from the Wall Street modelers--and consider their contributions to society.
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dirtbag
climber
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It's almost cute how the "observations" portion of that graph extends to 2040.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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one wonders... Sketch, blahblah, rick... I had posted copious demonstrations of "pre-diction" most notably from Hansen's 1983 paper, comparing it with post 1983 observations.
The main response was disbelief, since those predictions do not fit into your own narrative of climate science, the posts were totally discounted. Even with a description of how you yourselves could reproduce the results, independent of my work (which you did not take advantage of, because you believe the answer wouldn't matter).
There is a way in which the Space Shuttle disasters and climate science can be compared, and that way is in the interpretation of the statistical analysis of the data. As you recall in the hearings that took place after the first Shuttle disaster, the main safety issue uncovered was disregarding the rigorous statistical analysis of the likelihood of failure, catastrophic failure, of the shuttle by the engineers. This put that rate at, of order, 1%.
Now the Shuttle program was to have a lifetime of many hundred flights, and even you numerically challenged can see that there would be predicted to be a few accidents, where the entire crew was a part of those disasters. Obviously this is politically untenable.
Under pressure to launch at the rate that the program had initially claimed, the mentality of the management was very interesting. They interpreted their good fortune at avoiding catastrophic failure as an indication that the engineers incorrectly calculated the failure rate. They took their success as an estimate of the failure rate.
The result of that misunderstanding of statistics, a rather elementary mistake, and so perhaps understandable, was the loss of the Shuttle crew.
The problem here is very like the problem with climate science predictions. Statistical variability is very difficult to explain, and all sorts of behaviors, from the interpretation of scientific data to the explanation of the consequence of societally important actions, require some understanding of these fluctuations.
And certainly Americans, as a class, abhor the idea of "random acts" in everything they encounter. One need only look at the entirely irrational behavior of a populace that fuels the casino industry, and buys lottery tickets. That behavior is the result of either willful ignorance of elementary statistics or the belief that there is no randomness in the world (or both).
The BICEP result may or may not be true. If it is not true there may be a negative response regarding the leaders of the BICEP team, and consequences for members of that team in their future careers. This is largely the political aspect of doing science, where it is true that we'd like to "disprove" the prevailing ideas, but in so doing, we face the consequence of claiming to do that and then finding that we were wrong.
BICEP rests on the confirmation of other experiments, and in the elaboration of the theoretical calculations (which include simulations) with which the data are interpreted. The comparison of the data to the models is also a statistical process, and requires interpretation. At some point, the BICEP team felt that they had evidence that met the criteria for "discovery" and announced that discovery. Someone is going to be first, and while there will be accolades if they are correct, there will be consequences in being wrong.
The enterprise of government supported science is an interesting history that dates back to the end of World War II, in which Roosevelt had asked Vannevar Bush, who chaired the National Defense Research Council, to write a memo on the post-war activities that the government should undertake in supporting science and technology.
The resulting document, Science, The Endless Frontier laid the foundation for post war science research.
It recognized some obvious facts:
1) science and technology was an important contributor to the war effort,
2) that the nation would face future challenges to its existence that could not be anticipated
3) that these challenges may require a very quick response
On that basis, Bush concluded that if science and technology were to contribute to the nation's response to future challenges that it was prudent that the government insure that science and technology institutions existed that could be moved to respond. That the nation could not depend on either industrial investment or private philanthropy to so ensure a science and technology capability.
Further, that given the nation's inability to predict what the future threats might be, that the support for science and technology had to span across the entire domain. And the support for doing this would be persistent, so that the talent (we'd call it the STEM workforce today) would be available to respond.
Bush recognized that most of the time this enterprise would be involved in research and development that was not responding to some overt threat to the nation. The result of that activity, he argued, would help enlarge the nation's welfare.
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The precepts of this argument have come under increasing criticism of those who feel (as many responding to this thread believe) that the government cannot do any good. Yet the support of the science and technology enterprise by the government has fulfilled Bush's vision, it has worked as designed.
It would seem a requirement of those who would dismantle it to come up with some program to replace it. Going back to the pre-World War II model is easily criticized by a historical look at what happened then, proposing that nothing be done would seem a huge risk.
This risk is precisely the risk the managers of the Shuttle program felt comfortable taking, after all, there had been no catastrophic failures, so they felt that based on that record, there would be none in the future. We now view that as hugely irresponsible bordering on criminal.
Imagine that the consequence of a similar risk, to eliminate all government support of science and technology, might be on the nation's future.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sketch,
you didn't understand them then,
what has changed?
and besides, it is quite besides the point as those papers are a part of the accepted science on the subject. Unless you have some important science criticism (which you didn't at the time I posted them) it would seem rather irrelevant.
Also, you didn't seem much interested in reproducing the analysis. blahblah had a similar response which was indicative of him confusing a prediction from an extrapolation of a time-series, once again he, like you, are responding negatively in a reflex, without much consideration of what was being said.
rick's response was to point out that this is just a part of the conspiracy of 10,000 (or so) scientists, and discounted it on that basis alone...
it is perhaps more honest for you to just say you don't believe it.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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From Ed:
. . .
This risk is precisely the risk the managers of the Shuttle program felt comfortable taking, after all, there had been no catastrophic failures, so they felt that based on that record, there would be none in the future. We now view that as hugely irresponsible bordering on criminal.
. . .
Thanks Ed for confirming what many of us have long suspected--that the leaders of the United States government scientific establishment have engaged in behavior that is "hugely irresponsible bordering on criminal."
I suspect that applies to the government climate change business as well as the shooting-people-into-space business (after all, the exact same agency, NASA, is heavily involved in each).
As an aside on your post, it's interesting that you think you've identified something about your fellow Americans that may relate to public views on science and climate change:
And certainly Americans, as a class, abhor the idea of "random acts" in everything they encounter. One need only look at the entirely irrational behavior of a populace that fuels the casino industry, and buys lottery tickets. That behavior is the result of either willful ignorance of elementary statistics or the belief that there is no randomness in the world (or both).
Why do you think Americans are more interested in gambling than other groups? In point of fact, they're not.
See http://www.cnbc.com/id/43628943/page/1
Depending on what data you look at, you might say that US gambling is more-or-less in line with countries of similar wealth, but US gambling certainly doesn't stand out as unusually large taking into account US population and wealth.
What's the world's biggest gambling market? (spoiler alert: Macau).
Consider that Las Vegas swarms with Asian tourists, but I don't think you'll find too many Americans in Macau's gargantuan casinos (probably rounds down to about zero).
Do you want to construct some psychological profiles of every country where people gamble more of their wealth than in the US (they're a lot them), and then relate that to public beliefs about climate change? Sounds interesting!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I think the scientists and engineers had grown frustrated that their management was pursuing a program without taking into account the risk they had indicated existed.
This includes the administration at the time, where a part of the State-of-the-Union-Speech included a line about getting the Shuttle program to launch at the rate the program initially proposed.
That's a lot of political pressure. That was what was "irresponsible bordering on criminal"
the engineers had it right, and "nature" bore them out on it, to tragic consequence.
as far as gambling, it is a failure of our educational system that people persist in such activities. You can support lotteries, I suppose, as voluntary taxation. It is regressive, and it is a bad investment by those who make it, but we don't do a whole lot to educate people as to why it is a bad choice.
I suppose you're for that sort of thing?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sketch
as does your typical one line snark
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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That's a lot of political pressure. That was what was "irresponsible bordering on criminal"
the engineers had it right, and "nature" bore them out on it, to tragic consequence.
OK, so I guess in your view the engineers had sort of a Nuremberg defense into blasting two separate crews into oblivion as well as fleecing the American public of billions of dollars and irreparably damaging our space program.
Maybe they did, but perhaps you'll understand why some of us are reluctant to grant quite so much power to the US scientific establishment.
If your point is that the actual working engineers and scientists are "good," and it's the evil managers who are "bad," I may agree with you, but that doesn't change the point that the US scientific establishment can't be blindly trusted.
Back to gambling:
as far as gambling, it is a failure of our educational system that people persist in such activities. You can support lotteries, I suppose, as voluntary taxation. It is regressive, and it is a bad investment by those who make it, but we don't do a whole lot to educate people as to why it is a bad choice.
I suppose you're for that sort of thing? Ed, I know you're a smart guy but you're being dense here.
Let me try again:
The US does not have a gambling problem compared to other similar countries!
Your belief that it does is quickly proven wrong.
Why don't you pick on the educational systems of countries that have real gambling problems, like Norway and Singapore?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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The US does not have a gambling problem compared to other similar countries!
I don't care about the other countries... I'm not comparing...
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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Ed Hartouni wrote
skedric's post is somewhat incoherent...
Reading Ed's post, apparently Chiloe has written texts on elemetary statistics an oft maligned and missused class of data analysis techniques (at least from my view point).
what techniques do you use for data analysis?
Ed, prior to about 18 years ago I was a groundwater geologist working Navy CLEAN projects working on defining the nature and extent of contamination, fate and transport, what kind of geology existed in that particular area, potential exposure paths, and potential remdial strategies. Before that a field geologist for a bit. Data analysis was generally pretty basic; maps showing contamination distributions for example. We did use statistics to help define background levels of metals in soil among other things. In one case I used multivariate regression (could I do this type of analysis right now? No.) Defining various aquifer and soil parameters for modelling did not involve statistics, and is test method specific.
Oft maligned and missused? I mean some people bitch and moan that you can't trust statistics. I would argue that the problem is people using statistics and/or the accompanying data to suit their own ends. Sometimes people just don't understand what the difference between a piece of data and the population it was pulled from is. They will randomly take certian data as an example of something completely out of context. Example. Two data sets that cannot be determined to be statistically different from one another given defined parameters. Yet someone will say that the data set with the larger maximum concentration value means that there actually is a difference between the two populations. This may be so, but the existing data do not support this. I've run into this a few times.
As to the topic at hand? Lets just say you all have given me a lot of reading to do. sorry about the off topic babble.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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You're allegiance to the scientific establishment has been pretty obvious from day one Ed. Perhaps the best outlet for your concern would be in educating the younger generation of practitioners about the evils and ultimate damage to science that results from entanglement with political ideology. The rest of the world is slowly turning away from the lunacy of artificially forced energy poverty, the EPA's new edicts will be challenged for years in the courts, meanwhile the enso's will fizzle in the active ocean overturning while the underestimatef effects of a quiet sun continues to cool the planet. The game is jist about up, time for the smart guys to jump ship and practice some damage control.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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If your point is that the actual working engineers and scientists are "good," and it's the evil managers who are "bad," I may agree with you, but that doesn't change the point that the US scientific establishment can't be blindly trusted.
"good" and "bad"? if it were so simple...
the engineers had it right, the management decided otherwise. The politics played a large factor.
At the time, the engineers were being accused of "irreparably damaging our space program" because their caution was delaying flights and reducing the rate of launches. Very different window to look at the matter.
As for "blindly trusted" the oversight on all federally financed research is extensive and ubiquitous. Once again, you have mistrust for the wrong group... how that oversight is used by the political establishment is where you might look instead. In particular, the accusation that the scientific establishment is "fleecing the American public of billions of dollars" is absurd on the face of it. And especially true in the Shuttle program (of which I am no fan).
Unless, that is, you would claim that the only goal of the program was to launch and return the crews with no accidents and maintain the rosy glow of the PR from the beginning of the manned space program, that somehow American technology could accomplish this without the loss of human life. That we failed to do.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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the engineers had it right, the management decided otherwise. The politics played a large factor.
Ed is correct, the Challenger disaster followed a pre-launch meeting in which project management infamously overruled their engineers, the latter expressing misgivings about the booster joints in cold temperatures. There have been persistent rumors that the management decision was partly motivated by awareness that President Reagan intended to mention the shuttle in his State of the Union address the next day, whether there was direct pressure from the White House or not.
A pre-launch statistical analysis meant to test whether cold launch temperatures affected booster joint damage turned out to be manifestly incompetent, as did some claims that a shuttle rocket failure had a probability of 1/10,000. Other US rocket boosters at the time had failure rates closer to 1/25. The Challenger's last flight happened to be the 25th for the shuttle.
After Challenger, I understand that NASA perceived a new need to consult with statisticians as well as engineers.
The Challenger disaster made quite an impression on me at the time, and I ended up using it as a bad example in my first book.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Chiloe, the BICEP thing you posted, that is what I am driving at about humility being a defining ethical requirement to engage in research science, but not necesarrilly other professions, at least as a valued as a discipline.
I don't know about ethical requirements and certainly scientists have egos, but there are some things that push back and help to check the impacts on research. Most important in the long run is the need for replication of your results. Others will try to reproduce and improve on them, and if what you claim does not hold up, it's in their interest to expose that (as evidently is happening in the BICEP case). We used to joke about a new finding that should be mailed off to the Journal of Irreproducible Results, back before there actually was such a thing. However, replication can be slow to catch up with bad research, as the recent spectacle with Tol's economic-impact analysis has shown.
A lower bar than replication is peer review, which I'd call a necessary but not sufficient quality filter. Every researcher can tell stories of times it's worked well and badly, but I don't think the proposed alternatives have been shown to work better. Now more than ever there are ways to publish your work bypassing peer review, straight to your blog for instance, where the audience might or might not be able to judge. Many posters on this thread have shown eagerness to repeat pseudoscience from internet sites that suit their politics.
There's still a more basic level which is actually the first I thought of when Bruce mentioned humility. That is, if you work in science, you're around a lot of smart people who know more than you do about a great many things. This helps to keep a realistic awareness of what you do and don't know compared with others. In sharp company you're less likely to get away with spouting nonsense, and can get skeptical feedback even on ideas that might be good. Pseudoscience devotees seem to lack that kind of feedback, perhaps having no one around them who can call their bluff when sciencey words make no sense.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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You're allegiance to the scientific establishment has been pretty obvious from day one Ed. Perhaps the best outlet for your concern would be in educating the younger generation of practitioners about the evils and ultimate damage to science that results from entanglement with political ideology. Throw in religious fundamentalism.
Ironic quote of the month. And it's only the 9th day.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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rick worries about science when the science is counter to his political "philosophy"
the expression of opinion, whether or not that opinion is supported by science, is a fundamental "right." I have no problem with scientists getting involved with politics, and I would encourage them to do so.
I do not condone the manipulation of science for political ends. All scientists that I know are aware that the science they do can be checked by other scientists. If you are working in a scientific field and are doing important research that research will be under intense scientific scrutiny. If you manipulate your results you'll be found out.
Unlike other opinions, opinions based on science can be checked. I have no problem with you (or others) voicing your opinions, when you do so on scientific matters, and you are shown to be wrong, your opinion doesn't add up to much. rick is much more wrong in his science opinion than right.
Scientists are citizens too, and should be expected to play a role in the politics of the nation. They do whether or not you think they should. This doesn't mean that their science is suspect. And if you suspect it, you can check it, assuming you are capable of understanding that science. For the most part, other scientists not directly involved in the research can evaluate and make a judgement even if rick et al. cannot.
It is laughable to contemplate a conspiracy among all scientists, but it seems to be your working hypothesis. And all this to provide a reason to ignore the science which disagrees with your politics... another hypothesis, consistent with the "observations" is that there is agreement on the science because the science is correct.
But then, admitting that, you'd be hard pressed to engage in the discussion of how to mitigate the affects of climate change.
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